Name: Savoury Eggs
Ingredients: 4 or 5 hard-boiled eggs; chopped cold tongue; 2 or 3 small anchovies; a little beetroot; salad oil; lemon juice

Why it works: Beetroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 574 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Savoury Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Boil the eggs until hard, then cut them in half.
Remove the yolks and set aside.

Fill and season

Fill the egg whites with a mixture of chopped cold tongue, anchovies, beetroot.
Season the filling with salad oil and lemon juice.
If desired, mix the yolks with the filling 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.

Beetroot + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together574 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together44,316 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Egg + beetroottop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,243 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Whites hold the filling, while the yolks add richness when mixed into it.
Cold tongue: Provides the meaty body and savoury flavour of the filling.
Anchovies: Add a salty, savoury depth to the filling.
Salad oil: Adds fat and moisture, giving the filling a smoother texture.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich filling.