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Eggs, with Tomato Sauce

Hard‑boiled eggs topped with a tomato sauce made from tomatoes, onion, parsley, cloves, bay leaf, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 34,122 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Eggs, with Tomato Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs hard.

  2. Cut the boiled eggs lengthwise.

  3. Lay the cut eggs on a dish.

Make the sauce

  1. Cook the tomatoes with onion, parsley, cloves, and bay leaf for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain the tomato mixture.

  3. Melt the butter and add the flour to it.

  4. Add the strained tomato mixture to the butter and flour, then stir until thickened.

  5. Add salt and pepper to the sauce before serving.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cover the eggs with tomato sauce.

  2. Stand the covered eggs over hot water for about 10 minutes.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together20,633 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Form the main body of the dish, holding their shape when cut and served in sauce.
Tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the sauce, with acidity and moisture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and forms the base of the thickened sauce with flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with melted butter and tomato liquid.

The step that matters

Stir until thickened. Flour must cook in the melted butter and tomato mixture while stirring, otherwise the sauce can stay floury or form lumps. Stirring keeps the starch dispersed so it thickens smoothly.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  3. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, tomato, parsley, clove, butter, flour, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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