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Steamed Eggs

A simple dish of eggs steamed in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg 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 ↓

Steamed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place a small lump of butter in individual egg dishes.

  2. Put the dishes in a steamer over a pot of boiling water until the butter melts.

Steam the eggs

  1. Break two eggs into each dish.

  2. Return the dishes to the steamer, cover closely, and cook for three minutes.

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. Butter + eggtop 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

Eggs
Set into a delicate, tender custard as the proteins coagulate with gentle heat.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel, and keeps the eggs from sticking to the dish.

The step that matters

Return the dishes to the steamer, cover closely, and cook for three minutes.. Eggs set quickly and turn rubbery if overcooked. Covering the dishes traps steam so heat reaches the eggs evenly, and the three-minute time is the main control on how firm they become.

“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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