Name: Stuffed Eggs
Ingredients: 6 hard-boiled eggs; ¼ cup finely chopped ham or veal; salt to taste; pepper to taste; 1 boneless sardine, skin removed and minced (optional)

Why it works: Egg and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,526 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stuffed Eggs

Ingredients

6 hard-boiled eggs
¼ cup finely chopped ham or veal
salt to taste
pepper to taste
1 boneless sardine, skin removed and minced (optional)

Directions

Prepare the eggs

Boil the eggs hard.
Cut a piece from one end and remove the yolk.

Make the filling

Chop the ham or veal very fine and season with salt and pepper.
Mix the chopped meat with part of the yolk until smooth.

Stuff and serve

Fill the egg white with the mixture and replace the cut piece.
For variation, use minced sardine as stuffing.

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.

Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,058 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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: Hard-boiled whites form the shell that holds the filling, and the yolk is mashed into it.
Ham or veal: Provides the savory meat base that gives the filling its body and flavor.
Sardine: Optional substitute stuffing that adds a salty, savory fish flavor in place of the meat.

“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.