Name: Beaten Egg
Ingredients: 1 egg yolk; ⅓ cup of sherry or 1 cup of tea

Why it works: Egg and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,324 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Beaten Egg

Ingredients

1 egg yolk
⅓ cup of sherry or 1 cup of tea

Directions

Beat the egg yolk in a bowl.
Add either the sherry or the tea and mix well.

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 + sherrytop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,324 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk: Provides richness, emulsifying fat and structure, and gives the mixture its body.
Sherry: Adds aroma and a little acidity and sweetness to the mixture.

“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.