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Creole Eggs

Scrambled eggs cooked with onions, green peppers, mushrooms, capers, and tomato, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,719 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Creole Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion and green peppers; simmer for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in the mushrooms, capers, and strained tomato; heat through.

Scramble and serve

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs well.

  2. Add the beaten eggs to the skillet, stirring constantly until the eggs are scrambled.

  3. Serve the scrambled eggs on toast.

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. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tomato + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into soft curds that form the body of the dish.
Strained tomato
Provides moisture and acidity that flavour the eggs and sauce.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and savory, earthy flavour to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the vegetables soften without sticking.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs constantly while they scramble. Constant stirring keeps the egg proteins forming small, tender curds. If the eggs sit still over heat, they set into large rubbery pieces and can scorch on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, mushroom, tomato, capers, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, mushroom, tomato, capers, egg. 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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