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Fried Eggs

Fried eggs cooked in butter with salt, pepper, and water, then steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Fried Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Add a little butter.

  3. Crack the eggs into the skillet one at a time.

  4. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  5. Add 1 to 2 tablespoons of water and cover tightly.

  6. Steam for three minutes.

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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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
Provide the main body of the dish, setting into firm whites and softer yolks when heated.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the eggs from sticking and gives a rich flavor to the pan.
Water
Creates steam under the lid, which gently sets the tops of the whites.

The step that matters

Steam for three minutes. Covering the pan with a small amount of water traps steam that cooks the top of the whites without browning the bottom. Too much heat or too long a steam can overcook the yolks and make the whites rubbery.

“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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