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Eggs a LA Livingstone

Eggs a la Livingstone is a tomato‑based scrambled egg dish served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 118,511 recipes mention both. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: bread

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs slightly and add the tomatoes, salt, and paprika.

  2. Melt the butter in an omelet pan.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the seasoned eggs and cook them like scrambled eggs.

  2. Butter slices of toasted bread.

  3. Pour the eggs over the toast and sprinkle with 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Egg + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together118,511 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Tomato + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Egg + tomatotop 23% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,162 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 soft curds that form the main body of the dish.
Stewed and strained tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity, blending into the eggs as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the eggs cook gently without sticking.

Flavor stand-ins for the tomato

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

  1. Asparagusbetter flavor fit
  2. Chivebetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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