Name: Poached Eggs with Mushrooms
Ingredients: 1 tin of mushrooms; ½ teaspoon salt; a dash of cayenne pepper; a few drops of lemon juice; flour (for thickening); 10 poached eggs; toast (for serving); parsley (for garnish); watercress (for garnish)

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Poached Eggs with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

In a saucepan, combine the mushrooms, salt, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.
Boil for 10 minutes, then remove the mushrooms.
Thicken the sauce with a little flour.

Assemble and serve

Pour the sauce onto a dish and arrange the poached eggs around the outside.
Place the mushrooms in the center and serve hot with toast.
Garnish with parsley and watercress.

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + watercresstop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together469 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together579 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms: Provide the main savoury body and flavour of the dish, with their juices enriching the sauce.
Poached eggs: Add richness and a soft, runny yolk that blends into the sauce when cut.
Flour: Thickens the sauce by swelling with heat so it coats the mushrooms and eggs.
Lemon juice: Adds a bright acidity that balances the richness of the eggs and mushrooms.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with a little flour. Flour must be cooked in the hot liquid to swell and thicken it; added raw or in too much quantity it can leave lumps or a pasty taste.

“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.

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

Mushroom Soup60 recipes

Tomato Soup526 recipes

Brown Bread461 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Poached Eggs with Mushrooms