Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Scotch Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the eggs
Boil four eggs until hard, then place them in cold water to cool.
Shell the cooled eggs and surround each with sausage meat.
Coat and fry
Dip each sausage-covered egg in beaten egg, then roll in bread crumbs.
Fry in a deep pan with plenty of oil until golden brown.
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 + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,924 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Egg + meattop 22% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,432 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
- Form the soft-set centre that the sausage and coating wrap around.
- Sausage meat
- Forms the savoury outer layer and adds fat that keeps the meat moist.
- Bread crumbs
- Form a crisp coating that browns during frying.
The step that matters
Fry in plenty of oil until golden brown. The sausage must cook through while the coating browns without burning. Enough oil at a steady heat cooks the meat evenly, and the sausage sets fully before the egg overcooks.
“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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