Name: Plovers’ Egg Patties
Ingredients: plovers’ eggs; pastry; white sauce; ham; parsley; green peas

Why it works: Parsley and peas are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,885 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Plovers’ Egg Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Boil plovers’ eggs and cut them in halves lengthwise.
Prepare oval vol-au-vent cases from good pastry.
Fill the cases with a small quantity of green pea purée.
Add a little white sauce on top of the purée.
Place the half egg, yolk side up, in the center of each case.
Surround the egg with tiny round slices of boiled ham, overlapping to form a ring.
Sprinkle chopped parsley over the egg yolk 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.

Parsley + peastop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,885 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ham + peastop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together402 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,765 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Egg + peastop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,065 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).