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Buttered Eggs

A simple dish of eggs cooked in butter with a touch of milk and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Buttered Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the butter in a chafing dish and heat it slowly.

  2. In a separate bowl, break the eggs and add the milk, stirring very gently.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the egg mixture into the chafing dish and stir until the eggs are cooked.

  2. Add salt just before the eggs are done.

  3. Serve on toast or as preferred.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Walnut + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  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 a soft, tender curd as their proteins coagulate with gentle heat.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and keeps the eggs from sticking to the dish.
Milk
Dilutes the egg proteins slightly, giving a softer, more tender and creamy texture.

The step that matters

Heat slowly and stir gently. Egg proteins set quickly at high heat, and vigorous stirring breaks up the curds. Too much heat or agitation makes eggs dry, tough and rubbery instead of soft and creamy.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Cocoafits about as well
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, 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.

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