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Stuffed Eggs

Hard‑boiled eggs filled with a mixture of yolks, fried onions, ham, parsley, salt, and pepper, then fried until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 filling

  1. Boil the eggs hard.

  2. Cut the eggs in half carefully and remove the yolks.

  3. Mix the yolks with fried onions, salt, pepper, parsley, and ham.

Fill and fry

  1. Fill the egg whites with the yolk mixture.

  2. Fry the stuffed eggs until the tops are browned.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  5. Onion + hamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Hard-cooked yolks form a creamy, binding filling, and the whites form the edible cup.
Fried onions
Add crisp, savory flavor and a slight crunch to the soft yolk filling.
Ham
Adds salty, savory meatiness that seasons the yolk mixture.

The step that matters

Fry the stuffed eggs until the tops are browned. Browning happens through the Maillard reaction, which needs a dry surface and moderate heat. Too much heat scorches the tops before the filling warms through, so keep the heat moderate and watch closely.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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