Name: Egg Vermicelli
Ingredients: 3 eggs; 4 slices of bread; 1 cup milk; 1 teaspoon butter; 1 heaping teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Egg Vermicelli

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

Boil the eggs for 30 minutes.
Separate the yolks from the whites.
Chop the whites finely.

Make the sauce

Toast the bread.
Cut the toasted bread into small triangles.
Make a white sauce by heating the milk, butter, salt, and pepper together.
Stir the chopped egg whites into the sauce.

Assemble and serve

Pour the sauce over the toasted bread on a platter.
Rub the yolks through a fine strainer over the dish.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Whites add body and substance to the sauce, while yolks give a fine, crumbly garnish.
Bread: Toasted pieces form the base that soaks up the sauce and gives a firm bite.
Milk: Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, giving it a smooth, pourable texture.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the white sauce and helps it taste smooth.

“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.