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Buttered Eggs

A simple dish of eggs cooked in butter, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and peas are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,331 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Buttered Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Break the eggs into the melted butter.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, and stir until the eggs thicken.

  4. Serve the eggs on toast.

  5. For variation, add warmed cooked peas, asparagus, or French beans before serving.

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. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Egg + peastop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the eggs with fat, giving a soft, rich texture and flavour.
Eggs
Thicken with gentle heat to form the soft, creamy body of the dish.

The step that matters

Stir until the eggs thicken. Eggs set through gentle heat and stirring. Too much heat or too little stirring can make them curdle or scorch, so keep the heat low and stir steadily.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, pepper):

  1. Walnutfits about as well
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Peasthe original
  4. Pecansfits about as well

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