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Scrambled Eggs

Scrambled eggs are beaten eggs cooked with butter, milk, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Scrambled Eggs

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs slightly with a fork.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and milk to the eggs.

Cook

  1. Heat an omelet pan and add butter.

  2. When the butter is melted, pour in the egg mixture.

  3. Stir gently until the eggs are cooked to your desired consistency.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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 form the body of the dish.
Milk
Adds moisture so the scrambled eggs stay tender rather than dry.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the eggs from sticking and gives a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Stir gently over moderate heat. Egg proteins set as they heat. Stirring gently keeps curds small and soft, while high heat or vigorous stirring toughens them and can leave them dry.

“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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