Name: Larded Beef
Ingredients: 10 eggs; sweet potatoes; good dripping or butter

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 ↓

Larded Beef

Ingredients

10 eggs
sweet potatoes
good dripping or butter

Directions

Remove the gills from the oysters.
Baste the meat with the eggs until well browned.
Boil the sweet potatoes in their skins until tender.
Pare and slice the sweet potatoes lengthwise.
Fry the slices lightly in good dripping or butter.
Drain off the grease and serve hot.

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.

Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Sweet potato + buttertop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,491 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Egg + sweet potatotop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together843 recipes

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