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Eggs with Onions and Mushrooms

A sautéed egg dish with onions, mushrooms, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Eggs with Onions and Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the hard-boiled eggs and cut the yolks whole.

  2. Slice the egg whites, onion, and mushrooms.

Cook

  1. In a pan, fry the onions and mushrooms in butter.

  2. Add the egg whites and stir gently.

  3. Dredge with flour and add mushroom ketchup.

  4. Bring to a boil, then add the yolks, pepper, and salt.

  5. Simmer for about a minute and serve.

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

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

  2. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, with whites sliced and yolks kept whole for texture.
Butter
Fat that fries the onions and mushrooms, adding richness and browning.
Flour
Dredged over the mixture to thicken the pan juices into a light sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savory umami flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil, then add the yolks. Flour needs to cook briefly at a boil to thicken the liquid and lose its raw taste. Yolks are added afterward so they stay whole and do not break apart in the bubbling sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mushroom, butter, flour, ketchup, 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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