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Egg Baskets. No. 1

Egg baskets are hard‑boiled eggs filled with a chicken, butter, cream, and celery salt mixture, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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. No. 1

12 hard-boiled eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs hard, then drop them into cold water.

  2. Once cold, remove the shells and cut each egg in half.

  3. Cut a small piece from the end of each egg white so they can stand upright.

Fill and serve

  1. Mash the yolks and mix in the chicken, melted butter, thick sweet cream, and celery salt.

  2. Fill the egg whites with the yolk mixture.

  3. Place the filled eggs in the oven and heat through.

  4. Serve on triangular pieces of toast.

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. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cream + celerytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Their whites form the cups and their yolks form the creamy filling.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat, keeping the yolk filling smooth and moist.
Thick sweet cream
Adds moisture and softness to the yolk mixture, making it spreadable.
Cooked chicken
Provides savory bulk and protein-based texture within the yolk filling.

The step that matters

Cutting a small piece from the end of each egg white. The cut must be small enough to leave a stable base so the white stands upright, but not so large that the filling leaks out or the cup tears.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, cream, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, cream, egg. 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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