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Stuffed Eggs with Parsley

Stuffed eggs with parsley are hard‑boiled eggs filled with a butter, parsley, cornflour, anchovy essence, and cream mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 with Parsley

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the hard-boiled eggs in half and remove the yolks.

  2. In a mortar, pound the yolks with butter, parsley, cornflour, essence of anchovy, and cream.

Cook and fill

  1. Heat the mixture in a small saucepan until it boils.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Fill the egg halves with the mixture.

Serve

  1. Serve with a rich parsley or maitre d'hotel sauce.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,702 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 structure of the dish, with the cooked whites holding the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the yolk filling a smooth, creamy texture.
Cornflour
Thickens the yolk mixture as it heats, so the filling holds its shape.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, loosening the yolk paste for smooth filling.
Essence of anchovy
Adds a savoury, salty depth that enhances the flavour of the filling.

The step that matters

Heating the filling until it boils. Cornflour thickens only when heated to boiling, so the mixture must reach a full boil to become firm enough to hold in the egg halves. Stopping short leaves it runny and likely to slump out.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

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