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Ragout of Eggs and Bacon

A ragout of eggs, chicken or veal, parsley, anchovy, shallot, butter, mushroom ketchup, cayenne, breadcrumbs, and mace, topped with egg yolk and served with bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ragout of Eggs and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for 10 minutes, then transfer them to cold water.

  2. Peel the eggs and cut them in half.

Fill and glaze

  1. In a bowl, pound the yolks with the chopped chicken or veal, parsley, anchovy, shallot, butter, mushroom ketchup, cayenne, breadcrumbs, and mace until well combined.

  2. Fill the egg white halves with the mixture.

  3. Brush the filled eggs with the egg yolk.

Brown and serve

  1. Brown the eggs in a Dutch oven.

  2. Serve on a bed of crispy bacon or ham.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  4. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the main body of the dish; the cooked yolks bind with the filling and the whites hold it.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smooth, savoury texture.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and help the filling hold together with the yolks.
Chicken or veal
Supplies the meaty body of the filling, giving it substance and savoury flavour.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the filling.
Anchovy
Contributes a salty, savoury depth that blends into the filling rather than tasting fishy.

The step that matters

Brown the eggs in a Dutch oven. The filled eggs need enough surface heat to brown the egg-yolk glaze without drying the filling. Browning is driven by heat and the proteins and sugars at the surface, so too little heat leaves them pale and too much can scorch the glaze before the filling warms through.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, chicken, anchovy, shallot, butter, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, chicken, anchovy, shallot, butter, mushroom, ketchup. 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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