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Buttered Eggs

A simple egg dish cooked in butter with optional additions like tomato pulp, minced meat, cheese, or onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Buttered Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl, add salt, cream or milk, and pepper, and mix well.

  2. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  3. Optionally, mix in tomato pulp or minced meat before cooking.

  4. Fry thin slices of onion in the butter before adding the egg mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and stir continuously until lightly set.

  2. Turn out onto a plate.

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 + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a soft structure as they cook, forming the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and keeps the eggs from sticking to the pan.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the cooked eggs tender rather than dry.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs until lightly set. Eggs turn from soft to rubbery quickly when overheated. Stirring continuously keeps curds small and moist, so the eggs stay tender and do not scorch on the pan.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, pepper, butter, meat, ham, beef. 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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