Name: Eggs, Macaroni, and Rice
Ingredients: 4 to 5 eggs; 2 ounces Gruyere cheese (or pineapple); butter; 1 beef or calf's kidney (or 1 sheep's kidney); salt

Why it works: Gruyere cheese and butter work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 323 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Eggs, Macaroni, and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Beat the eggs in a bowl.
Grate the cheese and mix it with the beaten eggs.
Melt butter in a pan, pour in the egg mixture, and cook until set.
For the kidney, sauté it until half done, then mix with beaten eggs.
Cook the kidney and egg mixture in the pan until fully set.
Fold the omelet over the kidney 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.

Gruyere cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together323 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,847 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Egg + gruyere cheesetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together200 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Gruyere cheese + beeftop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together48 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).