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Savory Eggs

Hard-boiled eggs filled with a chicken and ham mixture, served cold with gravy and garnishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Endive and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 132 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Savory Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs hard, then remove the shells and cut them in half.

  2. Trim a small piece from each end of the egg halves to make them stand upright.

  3. Remove the yolks, then pound them and mix with the minced chicken and ham.

  4. Fill the egg whites with the mixture.

Serve

  1. Pour rich gravy around the eggs, but not over them.

  2. If desired, serve cold, garnished with finely cut endive, small salad, and beetroot.

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. Endive + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + endivetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together56 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Chicken + beetroottop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together293 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the whites that hold the filling and the yolks that are mashed into it.
Minced hot chicken
Adds savory meat flavor and body to the yolk filling.
Minced ham
Adds salty, savory flavor and texture to the yolk filling.
Rich gravy
Adds moisture and savory richness around the eggs without covering them.

The step that matters

Trim the ends of the egg halves. Trimming a small piece from each end gives the halves a flat base so they stand upright. Without it, the filled whites may tip over and spill the filling.

Swap the endive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, chicken, ham, beetroot):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Endivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, chicken, ham, beetroot. 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.

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