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Onion and Egg Cream

A savory dish of sautéed onions, thickened cream, and sliced hard-boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 340 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Onion and Egg Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the onions

  1. Chop the onions finely.

  2. Sauté the onions until tender.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Mix the cream with arrowroot or rice flour until thickened.

  2. Add the thickened cream to the onions.

  3. Simmer the mixture for a few moments.

Add the eggs

  1. Slice the hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Gently fold the sliced eggs into the mixture without boiling.

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 + arrowroottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Cream + arrowroottop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Arrowroot + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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

Onions
Soften and turn sweet when sautéed, forming the flavour base of the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the mixture.
Arrowroot or rice flour
Thickens the cream so it clings to the onions and gives the mixture body.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add substance and a soft, mild texture when folded gently into the mixture.

The step that matters

Fold the eggs in without boiling. Starch-thickened sauces can thin out and break down when kept at a rolling boil, and cream can separate under strong heat. Folding the eggs in gently keeps the sauce smooth and the slices intact.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, cream, egg):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, cream, 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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