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Dressed Eggs

A dish of hard boiled eggs filled with seasoned yolk mixture, sometimes formed into croquettes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Dressed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut hard boiled eggs in half and remove the yolks.

  2. Season the yolks with salt, pepper, mustard, grated onion, and celery salt.

Assemble and fry

  1. Roll the seasoned yolks into balls and place them back into the egg whites.

  2. For a variation, mix the yolks with ground ham, 1 egg, and bread crumbs to form croquettes.

  3. Shape the mixture and fry in hot fat until golden.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard boiled eggs
Whites hold the seasoned yolk filling, and the yolks provide the rich, creamy base.
Made mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that balances the richness of the yolks.
Ground ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the variation's yolk mixture.
1 egg
Binds the yolk and ham mixture so it holds its shape when fried.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the croquettes a crisp, golden coating.

The step that matters

Shape the mixture and fry in hot fat until golden. Hot fat sets the egg binder and browns the crumb coating quickly. If the fat is not hot enough, the croquettes absorb oil, turn greasy, and may fall apart.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, mustard, celery, ham, bread):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, mustard, celery, ham, bread. 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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