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Fricassee d’CEufs

A French egg fricassee made with eggs, butter, milk, fish stock, cheese, herbs, lemon, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fricassee d’CEufs

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the bread crumb in the fish stock and part of the milk until it forms a paste.

  2. Drain the paste.

  3. Beat 6 eggs. Add the cheese to the eggs. Mix together. Season with a little spice, salt, and pepper. Beat well.

Make the omelette

  1. Melt 2 ounces of butter in an omelette pan. Pour the egg mixture into the pan. Cook to make an omelette.

  2. Cut the omelette into large dice.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Mix 1 ounce of butter with 2 teaspoons of flour, parsley, thyme, salt, pepper, and a little spice. Grate the lemon peel and add it with the juice to the mixture. Pour in the remaining milk and boil for 1 minute, stirring well.

  2. Beat 2 eggs. Add the eggs to the sauce. Stir until warmed through, but do not let it boil.

  3. Pour the sauce over the diced omelette. 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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set to form the omelette and thicken the sauce, giving structure and body.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and helps the omelette brown in the pan.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the paste and the sauce.
Bread crumb
Soaked and cooked into a paste that adds body and moisture to the eggs.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and richness to the egg mixture.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce until warmed through, but do not let it boil. Egg proteins set and curdle when overheated, so boiling after the eggs are added would make the sauce grainy and thin instead of smooth.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, milk, fish, cheese, parsley, lemon):

  1. Thymethe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, milk, fish, cheese, parsley, lemon. 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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