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Pickled Eggs

Pickled eggs preserved in a spiced vinegar solution.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the eggs hard and remove the shells.

  2. Place the cinnamon, allspice, and mace in a muslin bag and submerge in cold water.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Boil the water with the spices; add more water if it evaporates to maintain 2 cups.

  2. Add 1 pint of strong vinegar to the spiced water.

  3. If desired, add beet juice for coloring.

Pickle

  1. Pour the mixture over the eggs in a jar.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Allspice + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Cinnamon + vinegartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the protein base that absorbs the spiced vinegar flavour as they pickle.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the eggs and gives the pickle its sharp tang.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aromatic flavour to the pickling liquid.
Allspice
Adds aromatic, warm spice flavour to the pickling liquid.
Mace
Adds delicate aromatic flavour to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the water with the spices. Boiling extracts the aromatic oils from the spices into the liquid. Keeping the volume at 2 cups matters because evaporation concentrates the liquid and changes the balance of spice and vinegar.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cinnamon, allspice, vinegar):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cinnamon, allspice, 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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