Name: Fried Eggs on Bacon
Ingredients: eggs; white pepper; fine salt; butter

Why it works: Egg and butter 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 on Bacon

Ingredients

eggs
white pepper
fine salt
butter

Directions

Break the eggs into a dish as for poaching.
Sprinkle with white pepper and fine salt.
Add small pieces of butter on top.
Place the dish on a hot plate, in the oven, or before the fire until the whites are set but not hard.
Serve immediately, placing the dish on another plate.

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.

Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Egg + white peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,312 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
White pepper + buttertop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,814 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).