Name: Stuffed Eggs
Ingredients: 12 hard-boiled eggs; ¼ pound (1 stick) butter; 1 nutmeg, grated; ½ cup grated bread, soaked in milk; ¼ teaspoon salt; minced sweet herbs (optional)

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stuffed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Peel the hard-boiled eggs and cut each in half.
Remove the yolks and pound them in a mortar with butter, nutmeg, soaked bread, salt, and sweet herbs if desired.

Fill and arrange

Fill the egg whites with the stuffing, heaping it up and smoothing it into a round shape.
Butter a dish and spread a thin layer of stuffing on the bottom.
Arrange the egg halves in the dish, cut side down.

Bake and serve

Place in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for about 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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,997 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs: Provide the structure and body of the dish, with yolks forming the rich stuffing.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, giving the pounded stuffing a smooth, creamy texture.
Grated bread soaked in milk: Adds moisture and softness, helping bind the yolk stuffing into a smooth paste.
Nutmeg: Contributes warm aromatic flavour to the stuffing.