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Stuffed Eggs

Deviled eggs made with ham or tongue, butter, salt, and white pepper, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,475 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Stuffed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the shell from the hard cooked eggs and cut them in half crosswise.

  2. Remove the yolks and mash them through a strainer.

  3. In a bowl, combine the yolks, ham or tongue, butter, salt, and white pepper. Mix until smooth.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the egg whites with the yolk mixture.

  2. Serve cold.

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. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + white peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

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

  5. Ham + white peppertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together535 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard cooked eggs
The whites form the edible shells, and the yolks become the creamy filling.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the yolk filling rich and smooth in texture.
Ham or tongue
Adds savory, meaty flavor to the mild yolk mixture.

The step that matters

Mash the yolks through a strainer. Pressing the yolks through a strainer breaks up dry crumbs, so the filling blends evenly with the butter and becomes smooth instead of grainy or lumpy.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, ham, butter. 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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