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Scrambled Eggs

A simple scrambled eggs dish with cream, parsley, pepper, salt, butter, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Scrambled Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, cream or milk, parsley, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and stir gently until it thickens.

  2. Serve the scrambled eggs on squares of hot toast immediately.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into soft curds that give the dish its main structure and body.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the curds tender rather than dry.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps keep the eggs from sticking to the pan.

The step that matters

Stir gently over medium heat. Eggs turn rubbery when cooked too hot or stirred too hard. Gentle heat and slow stirring form small, tender curds that stay moist.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, pepper, butter, nutmeg. 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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