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Eggs and Mushrooms

A fried egg and mushroom mixture served on toasted buttered crackers with Parmesan cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Eggs and Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mushrooms

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add the quartered champignons and heat thoroughly.

  3. Squeeze the lemon juice over the mushrooms.

Cook the eggs and serve

  1. Stir in the beaten eggs, pepper, and salt, and cook until soft.

  2. Serve on toasted, buttered crackers topped with Parmesan cheese.

  3. Place in the oven for 1 minute.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Pepper + parmesan cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,322 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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 that give the toast a creamy, rich texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the mushrooms brown slightly in the pan.
Champignons
Provide earthy flavour and a moist, tender bite to the topping.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mushrooms and balances the richness of the eggs.
Parmesan cheese
Adds salty, savoury flavour and a nutty aroma on top of the toast.

The step that matters

Cook the eggs until soft. Eggs turn from creamy to dry and rubbery when overcooked, because the proteins tighten with too much heat. Cooking gently and removing them while still glossy keeps the texture soft.

“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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