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 ↓
Scrambled Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Beat the eggs and add the salt.
Melt the butter in a saucepan.
Pour in the beaten eggs and stir quickly over a hot fire for one minute.
Serve immediately.
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.
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Set into soft curds as they cook, forming the body of the dish.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat, keeping the eggs tender and preventing them from sticking to the pan.
The step that matters
Stir quickly over a hot fire. Eggs set from liquid to curds as their proteins coagulate under heat. Constant stirring over high heat keeps curds small and soft; leaving them still lets them overcook into rubbery, dry lumps.
“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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