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Fricasseed Eggs

Eggs served in a thickened milk sauce with onions, carrots, bacon, and toasted stale bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fricasseed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Prepare the vegetables and add them to the onion.

  2. Place all ingredients in a clean saucepan with the milk.

  3. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  4. Melt the butter in a pan.

  5. Stir in the flour smoothly.

  6. Strain the mixture into the milk and stir over heat until it boils and thickens.

  7. Season the sauce with salt, white pepper, and a few drops of lemon juice.

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs by placing them in a pan of cold water, bringing to a boil, and simmering for 20 minutes.

  2. Shell the eggs and keep them in cold water until needed.

Fry the garnish

  1. Cut the bacon into small dice and fry until pale brown.

  2. Fry stale white bread until golden.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut the eggs in half and add them to the sauce, letting them heat through.

  2. Arrange the eggs on a hot dish, pour the sauce over them, and garnish with fried bacon and bread.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Form the main body of the dish and add richness and protein-based texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk sauce when cooked with the butter into a roux.
Butter
Carries the flour for the roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body and a smooth, creamy texture.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma as it simmers into the milk.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce as it comes to the boil. Flour thickens only when it is heated in liquid and the starch swells. Stirring while it heats keeps the flour dispersed, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth, evenly thickened sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, clove, milk, parsley, egg, flour, butter. 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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