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Eggs Stuffed with Anchovies

Eggs stuffed with anchovy paste, butter, and yolks, served cold or hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Eggs Stuffed with Anchovies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs until hard, then place them in cold water and remove the shells.

  2. Cut the eggs in half lengthwise and arrange them on a flat dish.

Make the anchovy filling

  1. Wash the anchovies, remove the head and backbone, and pound them finely in a mortar or chop as finely as possible.

  2. Add the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs and the butter to the anchovy paste, and mix until smooth.

  3. Fill the half egg whites with the anchovy mixture.

  4. Garnish with parsley.

  5. Serve cold.

Alternative hot version

  1. Alternatively, keep the egg whites warm while adding a whole raw egg and enough fine white crumbs to the anchovy paste to thicken it.

  2. Fill the warm half whites with this mixture.

  3. Serve hot, with or without an anchovy 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. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Their yolks blend with butter and anchovy to form a creamy, smooth filling.
Anchovies
Provide the salty, savoury flavour that defines the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the yolk and anchovy mixture become smooth.
Whole raw egg
In the hot version, its proteins set when heated, helping thicken the filling.
Fine white crumbs
In the hot version, they absorb liquid and thicken the anchovy paste.

The step that matters

Thickening the hot filling with raw egg and crumbs. Raw egg proteins set when heated and crumbs absorb moisture, so the mixture thickens. If the egg whites are not kept warm or the filling is too wet, it may stay loose or not set properly.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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