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French Eggs

A chilled egg dish with yolk filling seasoned with onion, parsley, salt, vinegar, and topped with drawn butter or white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

French Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs hard, then cut them lengthwise and remove the yolks.

  2. Place the egg whites on a platter to keep warm.

Make the filling

  1. Mash the yolks until smooth, then mix in the minced onion, parsley, salt, and vinegar.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill each half of the egg white with the yolk mixture.

  2. Pour drawn butter or white sauce over the filled egg whites.

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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  2. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 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

Egg yolks
Their fat and emulsifying lecithin make the filling smooth and rich.
Butter or white sauce
Adds moisture and richness over the filled whites.
Onion
Adds sharp, aromatic bite that cuts the richness of the yolks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich yolk filling.

The step that matters

Mash the yolks until smooth. Lumps of cooked yolk stay dry and crumbly. Mashing thoroughly breaks them down and blends in the fat, giving a creamy filling that holds together.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, parsley, vinegar, butter. 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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