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Deviled Eggs

Deviled eggs are hard‑boiled eggs filled with a yolk mixture of olive oil, mushrooms, parsley, and lemon juice, garnished with lettuce or watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Deviled Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Drop hard-boiled eggs into cold water immediately after boiling.

  2. Peel and cut the eggs in half without breaking the whites.

  3. Remove the yolks and mash them with olive oil until smooth.

Fill and serve

  1. Stir in chopped mushrooms, parsley, and a splash of lemon juice.

  2. Stuff the egg whites with the yolk mixture.

  3. Garnish with lettuce or watercress and serve.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  5. Olive + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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 for filling and the yolks that form the creamy filling.
Olive oil
Adds fat that makes the mashed yolks smooth and moist.
Mushrooms
Add savory earthy flavor and a bit of texture to the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich yolk filling.

The step that matters

Peel and cut the eggs in half without breaking the whites. Egg whites are delicate and tear easily when hot or freshly cooked. Chilling the eggs right after boiling firms the whites and makes the shell peel cleanly, so the halves hold their shape to be filled.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, olive, mushroom, parsley, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, mushroom, parsley, lemon. 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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