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Eggs Fried in Forcemeat

Eggs fried in forcemeat, served with brown sauce and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Eggs Fried in Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for 5 minutes.

  2. Place them in cold water and remove the shells.

  3. Cover the eggs with forcemeat.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the eggs until they are a nice brown.

  2. Cut the eggs in half and serve with brown sauce and currant jelly.

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 + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Sauce + curranttop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together628 recipes

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they 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

Eggs
Set firm when boiled, forming the core that the forcemeat coating surrounds.
Forcemeat
Forms a seasoned meat coating that cooks and browns around the eggs during frying.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and promotes browning of the forcemeat coating.
Brown sauce
Adds savoury depth and moisture to the served eggs.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity to balance the rich forcemeat and savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the eggs until they are a nice brown. Frying in fat browns the forcemeat coating through the Maillard reaction, which builds flavour and colour. Too little heat leaves it pale and greasy, while too much can scorch the outside before the coating is cooked through.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, sauce):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sauce. 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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