Name: Spanish Eggs
Ingredients: 1 cup rice; 2 quarts boiling water; 1 tablespoon salt; 1 tablespoon butter; 6 dropped eggs

Why it works: Rice and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,645 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Spanish Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Cook rice in boiling water with salt for 30 minutes.
Drain rice and add butter, mixing well.
Spread rice lightly on a hot platter.
Top the rice with six dropped eggs and serve.

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.

Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Rice + eggtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,350 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice: Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs butter and flavor as the base for the eggs.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, coating the rice grains and giving them a softer, glossy texture.
Eggs: Provide protein and a soft, set topping that adds richness and visual appeal.

“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.