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Egg-and-Mushroom Ragout

A savory ragout of mushrooms, onions, and eggs simmered in butter, broth, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Egg-and-Mushroom Ragout

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine mushrooms, onion, butter, and garlic in a stewpan; fry until lightly browned.

  2. Dredge the mixture in flour, stir for 1-2 minutes, then gradually add broth and wine.

  3. Boil gently until reduced by half, stirring continuously.

Finish and serve

  1. Peel hard-boiled eggs, cut whites into small squares and yolks into slices.

  2. Add eggs to the sauce, boil for 1 minute, then transfer to a hot dish.

  3. Garnish with toast sippets or croutons and serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Mushroom + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Release moisture and browning flavour that form the body of the ragout.
Butter
Carries fat for frying and adds richness and browning to the vegetables.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce as it is stirred in.
White wine
Adds acidity and depth, and reduces to concentrate the sauce flavour.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the main protein and soft, creamy texture in the finished dish.

The step that matters

Boil gently until reduced by half, stirring continuously.. Stirring keeps the flour-thickened liquid smooth and prevents scorching on the base, while gentle boiling concentrates flavour without breaking the sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, garlic, flour, white wine, egg, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, garlic, flour, white wine, egg, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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