Name: Eggs a LA Creme
Ingredients: 12 hard-boiled eggs; butter (for greasing); bread crumbs; salt; pepper; sweet cream

Why it works: Egg and bread match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 22,584 recipes mention both. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Hard boil the eggs and slice them into thin rings.
Butter a deep baking dish generously.

Assemble and bake

Layer the dish with alternating layers of bread crumbs and egg slices.
Sprinkle each layer with salt and pepper, adding bits of butter.
Ensure the top layer is bread crumbs.
Cover the layers with sweet cream.
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until heated through.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Egg + breadtop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together22,584 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Butter + breadtop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together27,145 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + creamtop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together41,494 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Egg + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together118,511 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Bread + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Form the main body of the dish, setting into tender layers as they heat.
Bread crumbs: Add structure between layers and help form a crisp, browned top.
Sweet cream: Adds moisture and richness, softening the layers as the dish bakes.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, helping the top brown and the dish taste rounded.

“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.