Name: Egg Pone
Ingredients: 1 pint boiled rice; 6 eggs; 1 quart meal (cornmeal or flour); 1 cup milk; 1 tablespoon mixed lard and butter; 1 teaspoon salt

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Egg Pone

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Let the boiled rice cool, then break the eggs into it.
Sift the meal and scald it.

Make the batter

Add the lard and butter mixture and salt to the meal.
Stir the rice and egg mixture into the meal, then add the milk.
Pour the mixture into tin pans and bake until set.

Serve

Serve hot with butter.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Bind the mixture and set into a tender, custard-like crumb when baked.
Meal: Forms the body of the pone, giving it structure as the batter sets.
Boiled rice: Adds moisture and a soft, tender texture to the batter.
Milk: Adds moisture and richness, loosening the batter and softening the crumb.
Lard and butter mixture: Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the finished pone.

“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.