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Buttered Eggs

A simple dish of eggs cooked with butter, served over hot buttered toast and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Buttered Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl and beat until light and frothy.

  2. Melt the butter in a separate basin over boiling water.

  3. Prepare slices of hot buttered toast for serving.

Make the eggs

  1. Combine the melted butter and beaten eggs in an enamelled saucepan.

  2. Stir continuously over a gentle fire until heated through, without boiling.

  3. Occasionally transfer the mixture back to the basin to ensure even cooking.

Serve

  1. Once the eggs are hot, pour them over the toast and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

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 + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set gently when heated, forming the soft, creamy body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth texture, and carries flavour through the eggs.

The step that matters

Stir continuously over a gentle fire without boiling. Egg proteins set and curdle when overheated, so gentle, constant stirring over low heat keeps the mixture smooth and creamy rather than grainy or scrambled.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter. 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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