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 ↓
Mixed Eggs and Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut the bacon into small squares.
Cook
Fry the bacon in a pan until browned, but do not burn it.
In a bowl, crack the eggs and season with pepper.
Strain the eggs and add them to the bacon in the pan.
Stir the mixture until the eggs are firm.
Serve
Transfer to a dish and garnish with hot pickles.
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 soft, firm mass that binds the dish together as they cook.
- Bacon
- Renders fat into the pan and browns, adding savory flavor and crisp texture.
The step that matters
Stir the mixture until the eggs are firm. Eggs set from heat as their proteins coagulate. Stirring over moderate heat gives small, tender curds; leaving them unstirred or overcooking them makes the eggs rubbery and dry.
“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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