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Buttered Eggs

A simple dish of eggs cooked in butter and served over toast, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Buttered Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl and beat them until light and frothy.

  2. Melt the butter in a separate bowl over boiling water.

Cook the eggs

  1. Combine the melted butter and beaten eggs in an enamelled saucepan.

  2. Stir continuously over gentle heat until heated through, without boiling.

  3. Occasionally transfer the mixture back to the bowl to ensure even cooking.

  4. Prepare the toast while the eggs are cooking.

Serve

  1. Once the eggs are hot, pour them over the toast and sprinkle with chopped parsley before serving.

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.

  1. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a soft, creamy mass that forms the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the eggs smooth and silky as they cook.

The step that matters

Stir continuously over gentle heat without boiling. Egg proteins set and curdle when overheated, so gentle heat with constant stirring keeps the mixture smooth and creamy instead of grainy or scrambled.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

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