Why it works: Egg and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Fried Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the bacon
Pan-broil the bacon slices until crisp and remove to a serving platter.
Fry and steam the eggs
Break the desired number of eggs into a saucer and slip them carefully into the bacon fat.
Add boiling water to cover the eggs.
Cover the pan closely and steam until the whites of the eggs are firm.
Remove the eggs carefully with a skimmer to the serving platter.
Sprinkle delicately with salt and pepper and serve immediately with bacon.
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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Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together50,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Set into a tender white and runny yolk when steamed in hot fat and water.
- Slices of bacon
- Render fat that the eggs cook in, adding savory flavor and browned crispness.
The step that matters
Steaming until the whites are firm. Eggs cooked in fat and water set from the outside in. Covering the pan traps steam so the whites firm over the top while the yolks stay soft. Removing them too early leaves runny whites, and cooking too long hardens the yolks.
“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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