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Eggs, Fried

A simple fried egg dish seasoned with pepper and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Eggs, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Warm the butter in a frying pan until it boils without coloring.

  2. Carefully break the eggs into the pan.

  3. Sprinkle with pepper and salt.

  4. Fry until the whites are set.

  5. Remove the eggs with an egg slice and arrange on a serving dish.

  6. Serve with bacon, tomato puree, Maitre d'Hotel Sauce, Bechamel Sauce, Fine Herbs Sauce, or Au Jus with Clear Brown Sauce.

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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set and form the dish's main body as the whites cook firm while the yolks stay soft.
Butter
Conducts heat to the eggs and adds richness and flavor to the whites.

The step that matters

Fry until the whites are set. Cooking on high heat or too long makes the whites rubbery and browned at the edges. Gentle heat sets the whites fully while keeping the yolks runny.

“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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