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Eggs with Truffles

Eggs with truffles served with béchamel sauce, croutons, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Eggs with Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the truffle sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine truffles and sherry. Cook over medium heat until reduced by half.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then add béchamel sauce and bring to a boil.

Prepare the croutons

  1. Fry croutons in clarified butter and coat them with minced parsley.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange croutons on a serving dish, place a poached egg on each, and pour the sauce over the croutons.

  2. Garnish the eggs with minced parsley, truffles, and black pepper. Serve immediately.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Truffles
Provide the main aroma and earthy flavor of the dish.
Béchamel sauce
Adds creaminess and body to the sauce that coats the eggs.
Sherry
Adds acidity and depth as it reduces with the truffles.
Clarified butter
Fries the croutons, adding browning and rich fat flavor.

The step that matters

Reducing the truffles and sherry. Reducing by half concentrates the sherry and truffle flavors. Cooking too hard or too long can scorch the sherry and dull the truffle aroma, so keep the heat at a gentle medium.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, sherry, pepper, sauce, butter):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, sherry, pepper, sauce, 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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