Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Fried Eggs in Paste
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the eggs
Boil the eggs for 4 minutes, then cool them in cold water.
Carefully remove the shells from the eggs.
Fold each egg into a piece of nice paste.
Coat and fry
Brush the wrapped eggs with beaten egg and dredge with breadcrumbs.
Fry the eggs in hot dripping or butter until pale brown.
Serve
Serve with or without brown sauce.
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.
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Form the filling that is wrapped in paste and set firm when boiled.
- Nice paste
- Encloses the eggs and crisps into a golden casing when fried.
- Breadcrumbs
- Add a crunchy outer coating that browns during frying.
- 1 egg (for brushing)
- Beaten egg helps the breadcrumbs stick and promotes even browning.
The step that matters
Fry until pale brown. Frying in hot fat seals and crisps the coating quickly; if the fat is not hot enough, the paste absorbs grease and the breadcrumbs stay soft and pale.
“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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