Name: Egg Sauce
Ingredients: 3 or 4 eggs; 2 ounces butter; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; small quantity of milk or water

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 81,283 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

3 or 4 eggs
2 ounces butter
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
small quantity of milk or water

Directions

Prepare

Boil the eggs for 12 minutes.
Once cold, chop half the egg whites.
Pound the yolks with the salt.

Make the sauce

Melt the butter in a small amount of milk or water until it boils.
Stir in the chopped egg whites.
Alternatively, melt the butter separately and mix in the chopped yolks and whites together.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Provide the main body of the sauce, with yolks giving richness and chopped whites adding texture.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, rich mouthfeel.

“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.