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Soft Boiled Egg I

A single egg cooked in hot water until the white is set and the yolk is mixed, served with butter and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Soft Boiled Egg I

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the egg

  1. Break the egg into a china cup.

  2. Place the cup in a saucepan of hot water (175°F).

  3. Stir the egg white from the sides of the cup as it begins to cook.

  4. When the white is jelly-like, break the yolk and mix it with the white.

Finish and serve

  1. Add butter and salt, then serve in the same cup.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Proteins set as they heat, giving the soft, custard-like texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the flavour and mouthfeel of the egg.

The step that matters

Stir the egg white from the sides of the cup as it begins to cook.. The white sets quickly where it touches the hot cup. Stirring keeps it moving so it cooks gently into soft, tender curds instead of a rubbery layer at the edges.

“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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