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Hard-boiled Eggs

Hard-boiled eggs served in tomato sauce, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,469 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Hard-boiled Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the eggs

  1. Boil water in a saucepan.

  2. Add eggs to the boiling water.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes.

  4. Pour the eggs into a deep dish.

  5. Transfer the eggs to cold water to cool.

  6. Once cool, shell the eggs.

Serve

  1. Cut the eggs into quarters and serve on tomato sauce.

  2. Sprinkle with salt.

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. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Egg + tomatotop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + saucetop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,895 recipes

Egg and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,895 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Proteins set firm when boiled, giving the eggs their solid white and crumbly yolk.
Tomato sauce
Adds moisture and a tangy, acidic base that contrasts with the rich yolks.

The step that matters

Transfer the eggs to cold water to cool. Plunging the boiled eggs into cold water stops the cooking quickly. This keeps the yolks from overcooking, which would leave a dry texture and a greyish-green ring around the yolk, and makes the shells easier to peel.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sauce. 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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