Why it works: Anchovy and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,260 recipes. Both carry hexanol, which smells green, fruity. The science ↓
Anchovy Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the filling
Boil the eggs, halve them, and remove the yolks.
Mix the yolks with a little anchovy paste.
Put the mixture back into the egg whites and skewer them together with toothpicks.
Coat and fry
Dip the stuffed eggs in beaten eggs and then in bread crumbs twice.
Drop the eggs into boiling lard, brown them, and serve immediately.
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.
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Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,260 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).
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Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,330 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Provide the whites that hold the filling and the yolks that form the creamy base.
- Anchovy paste
- Adds a salty, savoury flavour to the yolk filling.
- Beaten eggs
- Act as a binder so the bread crumbs stick to the stuffed eggs.
- Bread crumbs
- Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot lard.
- Boiling lard
- Conducts heat quickly to brown the crumb coating and cook the outside.
The step that matters
Dip in beaten eggs and bread crumbs twice. An even, double crumb coat seals the filling and prevents gaps where hot fat can reach the egg and cause leaks or uneven browning during frying.
“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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