Skip to main content
Main

Hard-boiled Eggs

Hard-boiled eggs stuffed with a mixture of yolks, ham, mustard, and butter, served with béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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, salt, pepper, mustard, and butter.

Make the Béchamel sauce

  1. To make Béchamel sauce, rub flour and milk smooth in a saucepan.

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

  3. Add butter and strain the sauce. Thin with cream if necessary.

Assemble and serve

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

  2. Serve hot with Béchamel sauce.

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
Hard-boiled whites form the shell that holds the seasoned yolk filling.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth texture to the yolk filling and the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the Béchamel, which thickens as its starch cooks.
Flour
Thickens the Béchamel sauce so it coats the eggs instead of running off.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that cuts through the richness of the yolks and butter.

The step that matters

Rub flour and milk smooth before heating. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unmixed. Blending it smooth first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the Béchamel thickens into a silky sauce without lumps.

Swap the mustard

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

  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, milk, flour. 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.

More deviled eggs recipes

on Toast 3 See all 151 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes