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 ↓
Fried Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Heat a skillet over medium heat and add butter or oil.
Crack the eggs into the skillet.
Cook until the whites are set and the yolks are cooked to your preference.
Season with salt before serving.
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
- Provide the main structure and body of the dish, with whites setting as they cook.
- Butter or oil
- Conducts heat evenly across the pan and keeps the eggs from sticking.
The step that matters
Cook until the whites are set and the yolks are cooked to your preference. Egg whites set at moderate heat while yolks thicken more slowly, so overcooking to firm the yolk can make the whites tough and rubbery. Watching the edges of the whites helps you judge doneness before the yolks overcook.
“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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