Name: Poached Eggs
Ingredients: eggs; toasted bread; spinach

Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Poached Eggs

Ingredients

eggs
toasted bread
spinach

Directions

Fill a frying pan with boiling water.
Break each egg into a tea cup, then slip it into the water.
When the egg white is cooked, remove it with an egg slice.
Serve the poached eggs on toasted bread cut into squares or on spinach.

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 + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Bread + spinachtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Egg + spinachtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,323 recipes

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