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Scotch Eggs

Hard boiled eggs coated in a ham and breadcrumb mixture, fried and garnished with parsley.

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 ↓

Scotch Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the coating

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped ham, stale bread crumbs, milk, cayenne pepper, and raw egg to form a smooth paste.

Fry and serve

  1. Take each hard boiled egg and cover it with the ham mixture.

  2. Heat the hot fat in a pan and fry the coated eggs for 2 minutes.

  3. Cut each egg in half lengthwise and arrange on a plate with parsley for garnish.

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. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard boiled eggs
Form the core of each portion, giving the dish its substance and bulk.
Ham
Forms the savoury meat coating that wraps around each egg.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and egg to bind the ham into a paste that holds together.
Raw egg
Binds the ham and crumb mixture so it sticks to the hard boiled eggs.

The step that matters

Fry the coated eggs. The coating must be fully sealed around each egg before frying, or it can break apart in the hot fat. Frying sets the raw egg in the coating and browns the outside, so the crust holds and the surface turns golden.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, egg, bread, milk, pepper. 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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