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Spanish Eggs

A tomato-based dish with eggs poached in a seasoned sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Spanish Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Heat the tomatoes in a frying pan.

  2. Thicken with bread crumbs and add chopped peppers and onion.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and let simmer gently for a few minutes.

Cook the eggs

  1. Carefully break the desired number of eggs on top of the mixture.

  2. Baste the eggs with the simmering tomato mixture until they are firm.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into firm pieces in the simmering sauce, forming the main body of the dish.
Tomatoes
Provide the liquid base and acidity that the eggs cook in.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the tomato mixture so it holds together around the eggs.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the tomato base.
Green peppers
Add fresh, slightly bitter flavour and some texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Baste the eggs until firm. Eggs set through gentle heat, so the sauce should simmer rather than boil. Too much heat toughens the proteins and can make the whites rubbery while the yolks stay runny. Basting over the eggs helps the tops set without overcooking the bottoms.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, bread, butter, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, bread, butter, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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