Name: Very Good Egg Sauce
Ingredients: a pint of rich melted butter; four fresh eggs

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 ↓

Very Good Egg Sauce

Ingredients

a pint of rich melted butter
four fresh eggs

Directions

Prepare the eggs

Boil four fresh eggs for fifteen minutes.
Place the boiled eggs into plenty of cold water and let them remain until perfectly cold.
Break the shells by rolling them on a table, remove shells, separate the whites from the yolks.
Dice all yolks into quarter‑inch cubes.
Mince two of the whites tolerably small and mix them lightly.

Make the sauce

Stir the minced whites into a third of a pint of rich melted butter or of white sauce.
Serve the sauce hot.
Salt as needed.

Variations

Boil turkey eggs in plenty of water for twenty minutes.
Use the yolks of three and the whites of one and a half eggs.
Follow steps 5–7 to mix and serve.
Boil guinea fowl eggs in plenty of water for ten minutes.
Increase the number of eggs taken to compensate for their delicate size.
Follow steps 5–7 to mix and serve.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

180Calories

6 gProtein

17 gFat

1 gCarbs

What these numbers assume: 2 portions

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Butter	1 tbsp (14g)	102
Eggs	1 large egg (50g)	78

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Acton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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.

Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Boiled whites set firm and minced whites add body, while yolks are diced for a crumbly texture.
Butter: Melted butter carries the minced egg whites and gives the sauce richness and a smooth coating.

“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.