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 ↓
To Make Egg Sauce for a Salt Cod
Ingredients
Directions
Hard-boil the eggs.
Chop the egg whites in half, then add the yolks and chop both together, but not too finely.
Combine the chopped eggs with the melted butter in a saucepan.
Heat the mixture until it boils, then pour it over the fish.
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.
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Egg yolks and whites thicken the butter into a rich, spoonable sauce body.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
The step that matters
Heating the mixture until it boils. Once the egg and butter mixture boils, the egg proteins can overcook and turn grainy or curdled, so the sauce loses its smooth texture. Heat it just to boiling and pour it over the fish promptly.
“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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