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Eyys in Wine Sauce

Hard‑boiled eggs served with a sauce of onion, flour, butter, red wine, stock, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 13,015 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Eyys in Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine the chopped onion, flour, and butter. Mix well, then add the red wine, stock, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Stir and bring to a boil, allowing the sauce to reduce slightly.

Serve

  1. Place the quartered hard-boiled eggs on a serving dish and pour the sauce over them. Serve with fried sippets.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and liquids.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the sauce.
Red wine
Provides acidity and depth of flavour as the sauce reduces.
Stock
Supplies savoury body and liquid for the sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs
Form the main protein of the dish, served in the sauce.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil and reduce it slightly. Flour needs to come to a boil to fully thicken the liquid; if it is not heated enough, the sauce stays thin and floury-tasting. Reducing concentrates the wine and stock, so the sauce coats the eggs rather than running off them.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Spinachbetter flavor fit
  3. Chivebetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, red wine, pepper, nutmeg, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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