Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Eggs

Hard‑boiled eggs filled with a breadcrumb, butter, onion, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, and raw yolk mixture, then baked until browned.

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

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

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

  2. Pound the yolks in a mortar with the soaked breadcrumbs and butter.

  3. Add the chopped onion, parsley, bruised pepper, and grated nutmeg; mix well.

  4. Incorporate the raw egg yolks into the mixture.

Stuff and bake

  1. Fill the halved egg whites with the mixture and place the remaining mixture at the bottom of a dish.

  2. Arrange the stuffed eggs around the mixture and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

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 white shells that hold the filling and the yolks that form the base of the mixture.
Breadcrumbs
Soaked in milk, they add moisture and a soft, light body to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, making the filling smooth and tender.
Raw egg yolks
Bind the filling and help it set and brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Incorporate the raw egg yolks into the mixture. Raw yolks must be mixed in evenly so they bind the filling; if they are added to a mixture that is too hot or unevenly blended, they can curdle or leave streaks, and the filling will not set smoothly when baked.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, butter, parsley, pepper, nutmeg. 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 stuffed eggs recipes

Anchovy 8Mushroom 4Cheese 3Spinach 3 See all 127 →

You might also like

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