Name: Stuffed Eggs
Ingredients: 6 hard-boiled eggs; 1 cup minced chicken, tongue, or ham; butter (to moisten); salt (to taste); sauce (for serving)

Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Stuffed Eggs

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the eggs

Boil the eggs until hard, then drop them into cold water.
Cut each egg in half and chip a piece from each end to make them stand firmly.

Fill the eggs

Mix the pounded yolks with minced meat, moisten with butter, and season to taste.
Form the mixture into balls the size of the yolks and fill the egg halves.

Bake and serve

Arrange on a dish, pour sauce over them, and heat in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 5 minutes before serving.

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.

Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Chicken + saucetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,513 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Egg + chickentop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,991 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

Eggs: Form the structure of the dish, with the yolks providing the base for the filling.
Minced chicken, tongue, or ham: Provides savoury body and substance to the yolk filling.
Butter: Adds moisture and richness so the yolk filling stays soft and well blended.

“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.