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Eggs a LA Margot

A cold savory dish of hard‑boiled eggs filled with a mixture of tongue, olives, anchovies, gherkins, capers, and lemon‑oil dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and anchovy match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,268 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Cut the hard-boiled eggs in half.

  2. Remove the yolks.

  3. Rub the yolks through a sieve.

  4. Trim the tips of the egg whites to make them stand evenly.

Make the filling

  1. Chop half of the tongue finely and mix it with half of the egg yolks.

  2. Cut six rounds of buttered toast, matching the size of the egg halves, and top with the tongue and yolk mixture.

  3. Finely chop the remaining tongue, gherkins, olives, and anchovies, then mix with a few drops of oil and lemon juice.

  4. Add chopped parsley, capers, and a pinch of pepper to the mixture.

  5. Fill the egg white halves with the mixture, piling it high but loosely.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place each filled egg half on a round piece of prepared toast and serve cold as a savory dish or for breakfast.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Egg + anchovytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,036 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Capers + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the white shells for the filling and the yolks that form the creamy base.
Tongue
Adds savory, meaty flavor and a firm texture to the filling.
Anchovy fillets
Add a salty, savory depth to the mixture.
Gherkins
Add tangy acidity and crunch to the filling.
Spanish olives
Add salty, briny flavor and a bit of texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Fill the egg white halves loosely. Piling the mixture high but loosely keeps the filling light and airy rather than dense and packed. Packing it tightly makes the texture heavy and greasy, while a loose mound holds its shape and gives a softer bite.

Flavor stand-ins for the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, olive, anchovy, lemon, bread, parsley, pepper):

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  3. Celerybetter flavor fit
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, anchovy, lemon, bread, parsley, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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