Name: Eggs a LA Creme
Ingredients: 6 hard-boiled eggs; butter; bread crumbs; coarse sea salt; black pepper; 1 pint sweet cream or milk

Why it works: Egg and bread match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 22,584 recipes mention both. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Slice the hard-boiled eggs into thin disks.
In a deep baking dish, spread bits of butter.

Layer and bake

Add a layer of bread crumbs, then a layer of sliced eggs.
Cover with more bits of butter and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Repeat layering until the dish is nearly full.
Ensure buttered crumbs cover all the eggs.
Pour 1 pint of sweet cream or milk over the mixture.
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until heated through.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Egg + breadtop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together22,584 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Butter + breadtop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together27,145 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + creamtop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together41,494 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Egg + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together118,511 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Bread + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned 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

Hard-boiled eggs: Form the bulk of the dish, setting into a firm, sliceable body when heated.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture, and helps the crumbs brown on top.
Bread crumbs: Absorb the cream and butter and form a crisp, golden top layer.
Sweet cream or milk: Provides moisture and richness that softens the layers as they heat.

“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.