Name: Royal Soup with Savoury Custard
Ingredients: 2 egg yolks; 1 egg white; ¼ teaspoon white pepper; ¼ teaspoon salt; ½ cup stock; Butter for greasing

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 ↓

Royal Soup with Savoury Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Preheat a pot of boiling water.
Butter a small preserve pot.
Beat the egg yolks and egg white with the stock, then whisk until combined.
Pour the mixture into the buttered pot.
Cover the pot with a piece of kitchen paper and place it in the boiling water.
Cook for 20 minutes without boiling.
Once cooled, turn out the custard and cut it into slices about the size of a sixpence.
Add the custard slices to the soup just before serving.

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).
Egg + white peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,312 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
White pepper + buttertop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,814 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).