Name: Eggs and Omelets
Ingredients: ½ cup cream or milk; 1 teaspoon flour; mushrooms

Why it works: Cream and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,500 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Eggs and Omelets

Ingredients

½ cup cream or milk
1 teaspoon flour
mushrooms

Directions

Dissolve the flour in a little milk or water.
Stir the dissolved flour into the cream or milk.
Boil for 10 minutes and set aside.
Make a plain omelet as usual.
Before folding the omelet, add the mushrooms to the center and serve hot.

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.

Cream + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,500 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Flour + mushroomtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,253 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,481 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).