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Egg Baskets

Egg baskets are hard‑boiled eggs filled with a mixture of roast meat, yolk paste, and gravy, baked briefly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Egg Baskets

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the hard-boiled eggs nearly in half and remove the yolks.

  2. Mash the yolks with melted butter, pepper, and salt to form a paste.

  3. Pound the minced meat and mix it with the egg paste, adding more melted butter or a little gravy to moisten.

  4. Trim the bottom of the egg whites to help them stand upright.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the egg whites with the meat and egg mixture and place them close together on a flat dish.

  2. Heat the leftover gravy until boiling hot and mix in a few spoonfuls of cream or rich milk.

  3. Pour the hot gravy over the filled eggs and bake 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.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + meattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Egg whites form the edible shells, and mashed yolks bind the filling into a paste.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness to the yolk paste and helps moisten the filling.
Minced cold roast meat
Provides the savory body of the filling, which is moistened with butter or gravy.
Gravy from the roast
Moistens the filling and forms the hot sauce poured over the eggs.
Cream or rich milk
Adds richness and smoothness to the warm gravy sauce.

The step that matters

Pour the hot gravy over the filled eggs. The gravy must be boiling hot and the filling moist; if the mixture is dry, it will taste crumbly, and cold gravy will not warm the eggs through during the short bake.

“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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