Name: Egg Sauce
Ingredients: 3 or 4 eggs; 2 ounces butter; ½ cup milk or water; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt

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

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

3 or 4 eggs
2 ounces butter
½ cup milk or water
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt

Directions

Prepare

Boil the eggs for 12 minutes, then cool them.
Chop half of the egg whites and set aside.

Make the sauce

Pound the yolks with the salt and mix in the butter.
Melt the butter in the milk or water until it boils.
Stir in the chopped egg whites.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked 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: Yolks are pounded into a smooth base, and the chopped whites add texture to the finished sauce.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Milk or water: Melted with the butter to thin the sauce and carry it to a smooth, pourable consistency.

“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.