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Venetian Egg

A skillet dish of eggs, tomato, onion, cheese, and cayenne, served on crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Venetian Egg

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a skillet and fry the chopped onion until soft.

  2. Add the canned tomato, salt, cheese, and cayenne pepper to the skillet.

Cook the eggs

  1. Break the yolks of the eggs without beating them and drop them into the mixture.

  2. Cover and cook for 1 minute before stirring.

  3. Serve on crackers.

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

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + cheesetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into the warm tomato mixture, giving it body and richness as they cook.
Cheese
Melts into the tomato mixture, adding savoriness and a rich, slightly salty flavor.
Canned tomato
Forms the main sauce base, providing moisture, acidity, and body.
Butter
Fats the skillet and carries the onion flavor into the sauce.

The step that matters

Cover and cook for 1 minute before stirring. Egg whites set with gentle heat, so covering the pan traps steam to cook the eggs evenly. Stirring too early can break the yolks and scramble the sauce before the whites have firmed.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tomato, cheese, pepper, 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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