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Fried Eggs with Ragout of Mushrooms

A fried egg served over a mushroom ragout seasoned with butter, vinegar, parsley, onions, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Fried Eggs with Ragout of Mushrooms

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the mushrooms and slice them if large.

  2. Chop the onions and parsley finely.

Make the ragout

  1. Melt part of the butter in a pan, then add parsley, onion, vinegar, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and sugar.

  2. Break 2 eggs, moisten yolks with 1 tablespoon cold water, add remaining butter, and stir into the mixture.

  3. Gradually add mushrooms and stew gently for 10 minutes; keep warm.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the remaining eggs in hot butter or fat, dress over the ragout, 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the ragout and add richness, while fried eggs provide the main dish.
Mushrooms
Provide the bulk and savory, earthy flavor of the ragout as they stew.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and helping to brown the fried eggs.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich mushroom and egg mixture.
Green onions
Add mild sharpness and aroma to the base of the ragout.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolk mixture. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated, but if the mixture gets too hot or is stirred poorly, the yolks can scramble into lumps. Keep the heat low and stir steadily so the ragout turns smooth and creamy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mushroom, butter, vinegar, parsley, nutmeg, 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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