Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Egg Sauce for Boiled Fish
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the eggs
Boil the eggs hard.
Transfer the eggs to cold water for five minutes.
Shell the eggs and chop them finely.
Make the sauce
Stir the chopped eggs into the drawn butter.
Bring the mixture to a boil.
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.
-
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Chopped hard-boiled egg gives the sauce body, texture and a rich flavour.
- Butter
- Melted butter adds fat, richness and a smooth, flowing mouthfeel to the sauce.
The step that matters
Transfer the eggs to cold water for five minutes.. Cooling the eggs promptly stops them cooking further, which helps prevent a grey-green ring forming around the yolks and keeps the yolks tender.
“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
Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipes
Caper Sauce180 recipes
Brown Sauce141 recipes
Dutch Sauce74 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.