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Eggs with White Sauce

Eggs served with a white sauce of butter, flour, cream, milk, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Eggs with White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the white sauce

  1. Melt 4 tablespoons of butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Mix in 1 ounce of flour, then gradually pour in ½ cup of cream and 2 tablespoons of milk.

  3. Stir until it boils, then boil for 10 minutes, stirring frequently.

Cook the mushrooms and finish the sauce

  1. Wash and peel 12 button mushrooms, then place them in a pan with 4 tablespoons of butter, 1 tablespoon of cold water, 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, chopped parsley, and salt.

  2. Bring to a boil, then pour into the white sauce and stir for 1 minute.

Serve

  1. Cut 6 hard-boiled eggs into quarters, arrange on a dish, and pour the sauce over them. 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted fat that forms the base of the roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and liquids.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety texture.
Button mushrooms
Provide earthy flavour and a tender texture in the sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs
Serve as the main body of the dish, their cooked whites and yolks sitting under the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the white sauce. Flour must be cooked at a boil for several minutes to lose its raw starchy taste and to reach full thickening. Stirring frequently prevents scorching and lumps on the base of the pan.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, milk, mushroom, parsley, egg):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Vanillaabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Coconutabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, milk, mushroom, parsley, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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