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Deviled Eggs

Deviled eggs are hard‑boiled eggs filled with a seasoned yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and lettuce share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 79 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Deviled Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the hard boiled eggs in half and remove the yolks.

  2. Mash the yolks finely in a bowl.

  3. Add butter, cream, onion juice, horseradish, cayenne, vinegar, and salt to the yolks; mix thoroughly.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the hollowed egg whites with the yolk mixture.

  2. Serve on a bed of lettuce or celery.

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. Horseradish + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together79 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard boiled eggs
Provide the whites that hold the filling and the yolks that form its base.
Butter
Adds fat, making the mashed yolk filling smooth and rich.
Cream
Adds moisture, loosening the yolk mixture so it spreads and fills smoothly.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich yolk filling.

The step that matters

Mash the yolks finely. Fine mashing breaks the yolks into small particles so the filling becomes smooth and blends evenly with the butter and cream. Coarse lumps leave a grainy texture that is hard to fix once the other ingredients are added.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, cream, onion, horseradish, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, cream, onion, horseradish, pepper, vinegar. 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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