Name: Eggs on Toast
Ingredients: slices of buttered toast; ground or minced tongue; ground or minced chicken; ground or minced ham; eggs; parsley; pickled beets

Why it works: Chicken and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,497 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Eggs on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the bread into round slices and butter them.
Toast the slices until golden brown.
Spread a thick layer of ground or minced tongue, chicken, or ham on each slice.
Stir the eggs and heap them in mounds on top of the meat spread.
Garnish with parsley and serve with pickled beets.

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.

Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,497 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Chicken + parsleytop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,314 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,765 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ham + parsleytop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,249 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).