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Egg Savory

Eggs cooked with tomatoes, parsley, onion, and cayenne, served on toast with anchovy paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Egg Savory

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Cook the tomatoes for 8 minutes with chopped parsley and chopped onion.

  2. Beat the eggs slightly and add them to the tomato mixture, stirring briskly until it reaches the consistency of scrambled eggs.

  3. Season with cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  4. Add thin slices of green pepper if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve on square pieces of hot toast spread with anchovy paste.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set as they stir into the tomatoes, thickening the mixture into a soft, scrambled texture.
Tomatoes
Provide moisture and acidity that form the base of the topping.
Anchovy paste
Adds a salty, savoury depth to the toast spread.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs into the tomatoes. Egg proteins set as they heat, so stirring briskly while they are added keeps the mixture soft and evenly scrambled instead of forming large curds or a rubbery layer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, parsley, egg, pepper, anchovy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, parsley, egg, pepper, anchovy. 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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