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Eggs, Fricasséed, À LA Bengal

Eggs cooked in a creamy, spiced sauce with onions, ginger, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Eggs, Fricasséed, À LA Bengal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Peel and chop the onions.

  2. Cook the onions in butter over low heat until soft, without browning.

  3. Add the cream, stock, ginger, cayenne, salt, and pepper; stir to combine.

  4. Thicken the mixture with arrowroot and bring to a boil.

Finish

  1. Remove from heat and stir in the diced lemon.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  3. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

  4. Ginger + arrowroottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + arrowroottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Form the body of the fricassée and set when gently heated.
Butter
Softens the onions and adds richness to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Arrowroot
Thickens the liquid into a glossy sauce without clouding it.
White meat stock
Provides savoury body as the liquid base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with arrowroot and bring to a boil. Arrowroot thickens when heated and can break down or turn slimy if overcooked or boiled too long, so it should be brought just to a boil and then removed from heat promptly.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, onion, butter, cream, meat, ginger, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, onion, butter, cream, meat, ginger, 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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