Name: Anchovy Baskets
Ingredients: hard boiled eggs; anchovy essence; lemon juice; cayenne pepper; carmine or cochineal; watercress

Why it works: Lemon and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Anchovy Baskets

Ingredients

Directions

Cut away part of the white of the hard boiled eggs to form an oval basket.
Remove the yolks and pound them to a paste with anchovy essence.
Season the paste with lemon juice and cayenne pepper.
Color the mixture lightly with carmine or cochineal.
Refill the egg baskets with the mixture.
Garnish with watercress 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.

Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together579 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together983 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,330 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Anchovy + watercresstop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together63 recipes

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