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Spanish Eggs

A dish of rice topped with eggs, seasoned with salt and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,645 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Spanish Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Cook the rice in boiling water with salt for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the rice through a colander.

Finish and serve

  1. Add butter to the rice and mix gently.

  2. Spread the rice on a hot platter.

  3. Drop the eggs on top of the rice and serve.

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. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Rice + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the base of the dish, giving bulk and a soft, starchy texture.
Eggs
Add protein and richness, and set into soft solids when heated.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, smooth mouthfeel and flavor to the rice.

The step that matters

Drop the eggs on top of the rice and serve. The eggs rely on the residual heat of the hot rice and platter to set. If the rice has cooled, the eggs stay runny, so serve promptly while everything is still hot.

“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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