Name: Baked Egg
Ingredients: 1 egg; 1 teaspoon butter; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Baked Egg

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

1 egg
1 teaspoon butter
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Butter a small ramekin.
Carefully break the egg into the ramekin.
Season with pepper and salt.

Bake and serve

Bake for 4 minutes until the white is lightly set.
Serve immediately.

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.

Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Egg: Sets with gentle heat to form the tender, cooked white and yolk.
Butter: Adds richness and keeps the egg from sticking to the ramekin.

The step that matters

Bake for 4 minutes until the white is lightly set. Egg whites set at roughly 60 to 70°C and yolks thicken further as they heat. Pulling the dish out when the white is just set keeps the yolk runny; leaving it longer makes the yolk firm and the white rubbery.

“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.