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Hard-boiled Eggs

Hard-boiled eggs stuffed with ham, mustard, and bechamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Hard-boiled Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

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

  2. Mix the yolks with minced ham or dried beef, butter, mustard, salt, and pepper.

  3. Stuff each egg half with the mixture and place on a hot platter.

Make the bechamel sauce

  1. For the Bechamel sauce, rub flour and milk smooth in a saucepan.

  2. Boil slowly, adding salt, onion, black pepper, and parsley until thick.

  3. Add butter the size of an egg and strain the sauce.

  4. Thin the sauce with cream if necessary.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provide the base structure, with yolks mashed into a rich, creamy filling.
Butter
Adds richness and smoothness to the yolk filling and the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth bechamel sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the bechamel sauce, which thickens as it simmers.
Ham or dried beef
Adds savory, salty flavor to the yolk filling.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the yolks and butter.

The step that matters

Rub flour and milk smooth before heating. Flour lumps form if it is not fully blended into the cold milk before heat is applied. Once starch hits heat, lumps set and are hard to remove, so the sauce stays grainy. Stirring steadily while the sauce simmers keeps it smooth as the starch thickens it.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, ham, pepper, sauce, flour, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, ham, pepper, sauce, flour, milk. 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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