Name: Poached Eggs
Ingredients: water; coarse sea salt; 1 tablespoon vinegar; eggs; slices of bread; parsley

Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Fill a shallow stew-pan with water and add coarse sea salt and vinegar.
Bring the water to a boil.
Add the eggs one at a time and boil for two minutes.
Carefully remove the eggs with a strainer.
Serve the eggs on delicately toasted slices of bread cut into diamond or heart shapes.
Garnish with parsley.

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.

Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,588 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,477 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,765 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Vinegar + breadtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,672 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).