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Eggs a LA Goldenrod

Eggs a la Goldenrod is a creamy egg dish made with butter, flour, milk, egg whites, and yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 a LA Goldenrod

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter until bubbling.

  2. Add the flour, salt, and pepper, stirring to combine.

  3. Gradually pour in the milk, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the chopped egg whites and heat until hot.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a serving dish.

  2. Strain the egg yolks over the top and garnish with parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavor as the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce that the flour thickens.
Hard-boiled egg whites
Add soft texture and body to the sauce once heated through.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Strained over the top, they add a fine, crumbly golden finish and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in the milk, mixing well. Adding the milk slowly and stirring constantly keeps the flour evenly dispersed, preventing lumps and giving a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, milk, 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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