Name: Scalloped Eggs
Ingredients: 6 hard-boiled eggs, sliced thin; 2 cups bread crumbs; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 tablespoons butter, cut into bits; ½ cup milk

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Scalloped Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Assemble

Layer half of the bread crumbs in a baking dish.
Add a layer of sliced eggs, sprinkle with pepper and salt, and add bits of butter.
Repeat the layers until the dish is filled, finishing with bread crumbs and butter on top.
Pour the milk over the entire dish.

Bake

Bake for a few minutes until heated through.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 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: Form the main body of the dish, setting into a soft, sliceable filling.
Bread crumbs: Provide structure and absorb the milk and butter to hold the layers together.
Milk: Moistens the crumbs and eggs, creating a custard-like texture as it heats.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, helping the top brown and the crumbs taste savory.

“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.