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Easter Eggs

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Easter Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the eggs for at least 10 minutes.

  2. To color with dyes, boil the eggs with the dye in water.

  3. For a patterned effect, tie each egg in figured chintz or calico before boiling.

  4. To achieve a reddish-purple color, boil the eggs with skins of red onions.

  5. For original designs, trace figures on raw eggs with a hard tallow candle, then boil in dye-water.

  6. For varied colors, use chemicals: Brazil wood for red, Persian berries or turmeric for yellow, turmeric for brown, logwood for claret, and a mixture of indigo, sulphate of iron, and slacked lime for blue.

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. Turmeric + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Onion + turmerictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,913 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + limetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + turmerictop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Egg + oniontop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,333 recipes

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

Egg and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,333 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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, turmeric, lime):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, turmeric, lime. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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