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Stuffed Eggs

Hard‑boiled eggs filled with a mustard‑yolk mixture, seasoned with pepper, salt, vinegar, and cream, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for 20 minutes, then remove the shells.

  2. Cut the eggs in half and remove the yolks.

  3. If needed, slice a little off the ends of the egg whites so they can stand on a platter.

Make the filling

  1. Mash the yolks and mix in mustard, butter or oil, pepper, salt, vinegar, and enough cream or milk to achieve the right consistency.

Assemble and serve

  1. Make a bed of parsley on the platter before placing the egg whites.

  2. Just before serving, pile the yolk mixture into the egg whites.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  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
Provide the whites that hold the filling and the yolks that form the creamy base.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavor that cuts through the richness of the yolks.
Butter or oil
Adds fat that makes the yolk filling smooth and rich.
Cream or rich milk
Adds moisture so the mashed yolks reach a smooth, spreadable consistency.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the rich yolk filling.

The step that matters

Adjust the yolk mixture with cream or milk. Yolks mash into a dense paste, and the liquid must be added gradually until the filling is smooth and pipeable. Adding too much makes it runny, while too little leaves it stiff and grainy.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, pepper, vinegar, cream, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, pepper, vinegar, cream, parsley. 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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