Skip to main content
Main

Eggs a LA Tripe

Eggs in a creamy onion sauce seasoned with nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Eggs a LA Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs and onions

  1. Cut the hard-boiled eggs into thick round slices.

  2. Dice the onions and fry them in butter until white.

Make the sauce

  1. Dust the onions with flour and moisten with milk and cream, stirring to prevent burning.

  2. Once the sauce is done, grate in nutmeg and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add the sliced eggs to the sauce and stir gently.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the main body of the dish, holding their shape in the sauce.
White onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, adding savory depth to the sauce.
Butter
Fats the onions for frying and carries flavor into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk and cream into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding creaminess and body.
Cream
Adds richness and a silkier texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour-thickened sauce. Flour and dairy can scorch on the bottom of the pan if not stirred constantly, giving a burnt taste. Gentle, steady stirring keeps the sauce smooth and evenly thickened as the starch swells.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, milk, cream, nutmeg, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes