Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Boiling Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Put eggs into boiling water and boil for 3 minutes.
Alternatively, place eggs in cold water for 5 minutes, then drain and add more cold water for another 5 minutes without boiling.
For salad or garnishing, boil eggs for 8 minutes.
To cook nicely, drop eggs into boiling water briefly to prevent sticking, then set on the stove until the whites are set.
Remove eggs with a spoon and place them on buttered toast.
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.
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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