Name: Stuffed Eggs
Ingredients: 6 hard-boiled eggs; ½ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 1 teaspoon mustard; 1 tablespoon vinegar; ½ cup cold minced ham, chicken, or tongue; cayenne pepper (optional); parsley (optional); onion juice (optional)

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Boil the eggs until hard-boiled, then cut them in half lengthwise.

Make the filling

Mash the yolks into a paste and season with salt, pepper, mustard, and vinegar.
Mix in half the quantity of minced ham, chicken, or tongue.
If using ham, add a pinch of cayenne.
If using chicken, garnish with parsley.
If using tongue, add a few drops of onion juice.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,588 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Yolks form the creamy base, and whites hold the filling.
Vinegar: Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the rich yolk filling.
Mustard: Adds a pungent flavour that balances the richness of the yolks.
Minced ham, chicken, or tongue: Adds savoury meat flavour and body to the yolk paste.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, mustard, vinegar, ham, onion):

Tarragonfits better
Capersfits better
Garlicfits about as well
Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, mustard, vinegar, ham, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.