Name: Eggs a LA Tripe
Ingredients: 6 eggs; 3 small onions; 2 tablespoons Bechamel sauce; 1 clove garlic, grated; 1 pinch mignonette pepper; 1 pinch nutmeg; juice of 1 lemon; coarse sea salt (to taste)

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Eggs a LA Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the eggs for 10 minutes.
Immerse them in cold water for 3 minutes.
Remove the shells and slice the eggs thickly.
Parboil the sliced onions in water, then boil them in a little milk.
Drain the onions and combine them with the eggs in a stewpan.
Add the Bechamel sauce, garlic, mignonette pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice.
Toss everything together over low heat until heated through.
Serve garnished with toasted bread sippets.

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.

Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sauce, clove, garlic, pepper, nutmeg, lemon):

Spinachfits better
Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sauce, clove, garlic, pepper, nutmeg, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.