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Eggs a LA Tripe

Hard-boiled eggs served in a white sauce of minced onions, butter, flour and milk, seasoned with salt and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Make the onion sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the flour and mix well.

  3. Stir in the minced onions and wet with milk, cream, or water.

  4. Let the mixture stew without browning the onions or butter.

  5. Season with salt and white pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the sliced hard-boiled eggs when the sauce is ready.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Onions
Provide the bulk and sweet, savory flavor of the sauce as they soften in the butter.
Butter
Carries the flavor and enriches the sauce while cooking the onions gently.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce that coats the onions and eggs.
Milk, cream, or water
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into the sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add substance and a mild, creamy texture to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Stew without browning the onions or butter. Browning gives a darker, more bitter flavor and can scorch the flour. Gentle stewing softens the onions and lets the sauce thicken smoothly and taste sweet.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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