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Butter Cups

Eggs filled with a butter, mustard, and meat mixture, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Butter Cups

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the eggs

  1. Cut a small piece off the end of each hard-boiled egg and remove the yolk.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mash the yolks with mustard, salt, chopped onion, melted butter, bread crumbs, minced chicken, and ham.

  2. Add pepper and enough gravy to moisten the mixture.

  3. Roll the mixture into balls the size of the yolks and place one ball into each egg white.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour gravy over the filled eggs, add a bit of butter on top, and sprinkle with cracker meal.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 10 to 15 minutes until nicely browned.

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

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Hard-boiled whites form the cups and the mashed yolks give the filling its body.
Cooked chicken
Provides the main meaty texture and savoury flavour of the filling.
Cooked ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour and more substance to the filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the filling hold together in a soft mass.
Gravy
Moistens the filling and adds savoury richness on top during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the top brown and the filling taste rounded.

The step that matters

Moistening the filling with gravy. Add gravy gradually until the mixture just holds together. Too little leaves the filling dry and crumbly, while too much makes it loose and runny, so the balls will not hold their shape in the egg whites.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, pepper, chicken, ham, onion, bread):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, pepper, chicken, ham, onion, 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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