Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓
Egg Sandwiches
Ingredients
Directions
Make the filling
Chop the whites of hard boiled eggs very fine.
Pass the yolks through a strainer and mix with melted butter or cream to moisten.
Add coarse sea salt and black pepper to taste.
Stir in the chopped whites.
Assemble
Spread the mixture on thinly cut buttered bread, placing two slices together.
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.
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Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Hard boiled eggs
- Provide the main body and rich, savoury flavour of the filling.
- Butter or cream
- Moistens the yolks and adds richness so the filling spreads smoothly.
The step that matters
Moistening the yolks. Sieved yolks are dry and crumbly on their own. Mixing in melted butter or cream coats the fine particles and binds them into a smooth paste that spreads without tearing the bread.
“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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