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Potted Eggs

A dish of yolks mixed with anchovy sauce, butter, salt, pepper, and chopped egg whites, then poured into small pots and covered with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Potted Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Pound the yolks of the eggs and mix with the anchovy sauce.

  2. Add the butter and mix to a paste.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Pot and seal

  1. Chop the whites of the eggs very small.

  2. Fill small pots with the paste, adding the chopped whites as you go.

  3. Cover the mixture with clarified butter.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Yolks of eggs
Bind the paste and give it a rich, creamy texture.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and smoothness, helping the paste hold together and spread.
Anchovy sauce
Contributes savoury depth and salty aroma to the paste.
Whites of eggs
Chopped and folded through, adding a firmer texture against the smooth paste.

The step that matters

Mixing the paste with butter. Butter must be worked in to a smooth paste without being melted, so the mixture stays thick and spreadable. Warm or overworked butter can separate and turn greasy.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, anchovy, sauce. 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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