Why it works: Egg and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Scrambled Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Crack the eggs into a frying pan.
Sprinkle with pepper and salt.
Stir gently with a fork or spoon about a dozen times while cooking.
Remove from heat before they are completely dry and hard.
Heap the eggs in the center of a flat dish.
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 + 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
- Set into soft curds that give the dish its structure and creamy texture.
The step that matters
Remove from heat before they are completely dry and hard. Eggs keep cooking from residual heat after leaving the pan. Pulling them off while still moist and glossy prevents proteins from tightening further, which would make the curds dry, rubbery and hard.
“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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