Name: Stuffed Eggs
Ingredients: 6 eggs; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; a dash of cayenne pepper; 1 tablespoon oil or melted butter; 1 teaspoon mustard; 1 teaspoon vinegar; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; additional parsley for garnish

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

Boil the eggs for half an hour.
Cool and shell the eggs.
Halve the eggs and remove the yolks.

Make and fill

Mash the yolks and mix in salt, cayenne pepper, oil or melted butter, mustard, vinegar, and chopped parsley.
Press the mixture into the hollows of the egg whites.
Garnish the dish with additional parsley.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,588 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Provide the yolk filling and the white shells that hold it.
Oil or melted butter: Adds fat, making the yolk filling smooth and rich.
Mustard: Adds sharp flavour that balances the richness of the yolks.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the yolk filling.

Swap the mustard

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

Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Chivefits about as well
Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, butter, vinegar, parsley. 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.