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A German Entremet

A baked dish of egg whites filled with a yolk and cream mixture, topped with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

A German Entremet

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the eggs until hard, then cool and cut them in half lengthwise.

  2. Carefully remove the yolks and pass them through a fine sieve.

  3. Mix the yolks with the cream, adding pepper, salt, and herbs.

Assemble

  1. Pour the mixture into a flat, heatproof pie dish.

  2. Arrange the egg white halves in the dish in a star pattern or your preferred design.

  3. Fill the cavities of the egg whites with the yolk mixture and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 300°F (150°C) just until the top is a bright yellow color.

  2. Serve in the dish it was baked in.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  3. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Cream + breadtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Eggs
Egg whites form the structure and the yolks, pressed and mixed with cream, make the rich filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the yolk filling a smooth, soft texture when baked.
Bread crumbs
Form a topping that helps the surface brown lightly during baking.

The step that matters

Bake just until the top turns bright yellow. Egg and cream mixtures set from gentle heat. Overbaking at this temperature can make the custard firm, grainy, or watery as the proteins tighten and release liquid.

“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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