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 ↓
Jonquil Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Preheat a pot of water to a boil.
Whip the egg whites to a stiff froth.
Butter small ramekins and half fill them with the whipped egg whites.
Make a depression in the center of each and drop an egg yolk into the hollow.
Place the ramekins in shallow boiling water, cover, and cook for three minutes.
For a larger dish, mound the whipped egg whites on a buttered platter, hollow each mound for the yolk, and cook as above.
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
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