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Eggs, Potted

A dish of hard‑boiled egg yolks mixed with anchovy sauce, butter, salt, pepper, and chopped egg whites, topped with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Eggs, Potted

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Pound the hard-boiled yolks of the eggs with anchovy sauce.

  2. Mix in the butter until it forms a paste.

  3. Season with salt and white pepper.

Fill and finish

  1. Chop the whites of the eggs very small.

  2. Fill small pots with the yolk paste, adding the chopped whites as you go.

  3. Cover the tops with clarified butter.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Form the rich, creamy body of the paste.
Butter
Adds fat and smoothness, binding the yolks into a spreadable paste.
Anchovy sauce
Adds savory, salty depth to the yolk paste.
Clarified butter
Seals the surface, protecting the paste from air and drying.

The step that matters

Pounding the yolks into a smooth paste. If the yolks are not pounded fine and mixed well with the butter, the paste stays grainy and crumbly rather than smooth and spreadable. Working the butter in gradually helps the fat emulsify evenly with the yolk.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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