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Dessert

CEufs a LA Tripe

A cucumber and egg dish with butter, parsley, green onions, flour, water, milk, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

CEufs a LA Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Cut cucumbers into small pieces.

  2. Sauté cucumbers in butter with parsley and green onions.

  3. Add flour and stir, then moisten with water and season with salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. When the sauce is ready, add hard-boiled eggs cut into quarters and milk.

  2. Bring to a boil, adjust seasoning, 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  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

Cucumbers
Provide the main vegetable body and fresh texture of the dish.
Butter
Fat for sautéing that carries flavor and helps cucumbers brown lightly.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce when stirred with butter and water.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add substance and richness, and their quartered pieces hold their shape in the sauce.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the sauce's flavor when added at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and water. Flour must be stirred into the butter and cooked briefly before the water goes in, otherwise it stays floury. Adding water gradually while stirring keeps the sauce smooth rather than lumpy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, butter, parsley, flour, pepper, egg, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, butter, parsley, flour, pepper, egg, milk. 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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