Skip to main content
Main

Scrambled Eggs with Cheese

Scrambled eggs cooked with butter, milk, salt, paprika, and Parmesan cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Scrambled Eggs with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs until the whites and yolks are well mixed.

  2. Add salt, paprika, and milk or cream to the eggs.

Cook

  1. Melt butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Pour in the egg mixture and stir continuously as it thickens.

  3. Just before it reaches the desired consistency, sprinkle in the Parmesan cheese while stirring.

  4. Reduce the heat or place the pan in a warm water bath to finish cooking.

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.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + parmesan cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,608 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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
Set into soft curds that give the scrambled eggs their structure.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and creaminess, keeping the curds tender rather than dry.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor and keeps the eggs from sticking to the pan.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory, salty flavor and melts into the eggs for a richer texture.

The step that matters

Stir continuously and pull the eggs off the heat early. Egg proteins set quickly over heat. Constant stirring keeps curds small and soft, and removing the pan or lowering the heat before they look fully done lets residual heat finish cooking without making them rubbery or dry.

“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.

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipes