Name: Egg Baskets
Ingredients: eggs; melted butter; pepper; coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); cold roast duck, chicken, or turkey; gravy; cream or rich milk

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Egg Baskets

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the eggs hard, then cool them in cold water.
Cut the eggs in half and remove the yolks.
Rub the yolks into a paste with melted butter, adding pepper and salt.
Chop the cold roast meat finely and pound it smooth, mixing in the yolk paste.
Moisten the mixture with melted butter and leftover gravy while pounding.
Heat the mixture over hot water until warm.
Trim the ends of the egg whites to make them stand firm, then fill them with the meat mixture.
Arrange the filled egg halves on a flat round dish and pour over any remaining gravy or make fresh gravy.
Add a few spoonfuls of cream or rich milk to improve the dressing.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Pepper + chickentop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,958 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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