Name: Stuffed Eggs
Ingredients: 8 eggs; 4 teaspoons potted ham; ½ teaspoon lemon juice; 1 teaspoon creamed butter; cayenne pepper to taste; salt to taste

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stuffed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

Hard boil the eggs, then cool and peel them.
Cut the eggs in half and remove the yolks.

Make the filling

In a bowl, mash the yolks with potted ham, lemon juice, creamed butter, cayenne pepper, and salt.
Fill the egg whites with the yolk mixture.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Egg + buttertop 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: Provide the whites that hold the filling and the yolks that form its creamy base.
Potted ham: Adds savory meaty flavor to the yolk filling.
Creamed butter: Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture to the yolk filling.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich yolk filling.

“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.