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 enough fat in a frying pan to half cover the eggs.
Break the eggs into separate cups or saucers, then slip them into the hot fat.
For hard-cooked eggs, either spoon hot fat over them or carefully turn them over without breaking the yolks.
Once cooked to your liking, sprinkle with pepper and coarse sea salt, then serve.
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).
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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together50,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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
- Form the dish itself, setting into a firm white around a yolk when cooked in hot fat.
- Drippings, lard, or butter
- Conducts heat to the eggs and adds flavour and a golden edge to the whites.
The step that matters
Turning or basting for hard-cooked eggs. Turning or spooning hot fat over the eggs sets the top of the white without breaking the yolk. Breaking a yolk spreads it through the white and makes the egg look messy.
“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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