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Eggs with Melted Cheese

Eggs cooked with melted Parmesan cheese, wine, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Eggs with Melted Cheese

12 eggs
Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Set a dish on a slow fire and add the grated Parmesan cheese, white wine, parsley, chives, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Add the butter and stir thoroughly while cooking until the cheese melts.

Cook and serve

  1. Break in the eggs and cook for an additional five minutes.

  2. Serve hot, surrounded by heart-shaped croutons.

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. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Chive + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together300 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Parmesan cheese
Melts into the sauce, adding salty, savoury flavour and body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the cheese melt smoothly into a silky sauce.
Eggs
Set with gentle heat to form the soft, cooked body of the dish.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the cheese and helps it blend smoothly.

The step that matters

Melting the cheese over slow heat. Parmesan can turn stringy or grainy if it overheats or melts too fast. Low heat and constant stirring let the cheese and butter emulsify into a smooth sauce.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parmesan cheese, white wine, parsley, chive, pepper, butter, egg):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parmesan cheese, white wine, parsley, chive, pepper, butter, egg. 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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