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50 Eggs with Onions and Mushrooms

A casserole of boiled eggs, onions, mushrooms, and gravy, finished with flour and seasonings.

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 ↓

50 Eggs with Onions and Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs hard, then remove the yolks whole.

  2. Cut the egg whites into strips.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the onions and mushrooms in butter until soft.

  2. Add the egg whites and stir gently.

  3. Pour off excess fat.

  4. Sprinkle flour over the mixture.

  5. Add the gravy.

  6. Bring to a boil.

  7. Gently fold in the yolks.

  8. Season with pepper and salt.

  9. Simmer for 1 minute.

  10. 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. 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

Eggs
Provide the main body of the dish, with whites cut into strips and yolks folded in whole.
Onions
Soften and add sweetness and savoury depth to the mixture.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender, meaty texture.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onions and mushrooms and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the mixture with the fat and gravy to make a smooth sauce.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid that forms the sauce and carries the savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the yolks. Egg yolks are delicate and break apart easily when stirred hard. Folding them in gently keeps them whole so they stay intact in the sauce rather than dissolving into it.

Swap the onion

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

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

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