Name: Poached Eggs and Mushroom Sauce
Ingredients: 6 or 7 eggs; 5 or 6 small mushrooms; 3 to 4 oz. boiled ham, minced; 1 oz. butter; ½ pint stock; pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; toast

Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Poached Eggs and Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

In a pan, mix the minced ham with the butter, pepper, salt, and 1 raw egg. Heat until hot.
Cook the mushrooms in the stock until tender.
Cut the toast into neat pieces and place on a hot dish.
Top the toast with the hot ham mixture, then add the poached eggs on top.
Pour the gravy and mushrooms around the dish.

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.

Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Mushroom + hamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,486 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).