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Stirbed Eggs with Tomatoes

A quick pan dish of beaten eggs cooked with tomatoes and shallots, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Stirbed Eggs with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the eggs

  1. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped shallots and fry until soft.

  3. Stir in the diced tomato and cook until slightly reduced.

  4. Add the beaten eggs and season with salt and pepper.

  5. Stir until the mixture begins to set.

Serve

  1. Serve the egg mixture on rounds of buttered toast.

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.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Shallot + tomatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together583 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 that form the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for gentle cooking and a smooth texture.
Tomato
Adds moisture and acidity as it reduces slightly in the pan.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion-like aroma when softened in fat.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture begins to set. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Removing them from the heat while still slightly loose lets residual heat finish the curds, so they stay creamy rather than dry and rubbery.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, shallot, egg, pepper, bread):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, shallot, egg, pepper, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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