Skip to main content
Main

Yokohama Eggs

Egg yolk mixture flavored with lemon and saffron, served over rice soaked in milk.

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

Why it works: Lemon and saffron match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 538 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Yokohama Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the egg sauce

  1. Beat the yolks of two eggs until foaming.

  2. Add a little salt.

  3. Slowly pour in the juice of one lemon, drop by drop.

  4. Flavor with a pinch of saffron.

Serve

  1. Serve with rice soaked in milk.

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. Lemon + saffrontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together538 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Saffron + ricetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the sauce, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps set the sauce when combined with the yolks.
Saffron
Adds aroma and a golden color to the sauce.
Rice
Provides a neutral starchy base that carries the sauce.

The step that matters

Slowly pour in the lemon juice, drop by drop. Adding acid too quickly can cause the yolk proteins to clump or curdle instead of forming a smooth, emulsified sauce. Adding it slowly, while whisking, lets the yolks absorb it gradually.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, saffron, rice, milk):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, saffron, rice, milk. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipes