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Fricasseed Eggs

Hard-boiled eggs filled with a yolk mixture and served in a veal or chicken gravy.

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 cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricasseed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs hard.

  2. Cut the eggs in half crosswise.

  3. Remove the yolks.

  4. Chop the yolks finely or rub to a paste with ground tongue or ham, minced parsley, melted butter, and made mustard.

  5. Fill the egg whites with the mixture.

  6. Place the filled eggs close together in a deep covered dish, open ends up.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. In a saucepan, heat the veal gravy or chicken broth to boiling with chopped parsley, salt, pepper, and cream.

  2. Pour the hot gravy over the eggs.

  3. Cover and let stand for five minutes before serving.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Ham + mustardtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together747 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Form the structure of the dish as the filled whites, with yolks providing the rich filling.
Butter
Adds fat and smooth richness to the yolk filling, helping it bind into a paste.
Veal gravy or chicken broth
Supplies moisture and savory flavor that soaks into the filled eggs as it is poured over.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the gravy, giving it a smoother, milder body.
Ground tongue or ham
Contributes meaty savory flavor to the yolk filling.

The step that matters

Pour the hot gravy over the eggs. The gravy must be fully boiling when poured so it stays hot enough to warm the filled eggs through during the covered rest. Cooler liquid would leave the eggs lukewarm and the filling under-flavored.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, ham, parsley, butter, veal, pepper, cream):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, ham, parsley, butter, veal, pepper, cream. 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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