Name: Pickled Eggs
Ingredients: 6 hard-boiled eggs; 1 teaspoon cinnamon; 1 teaspoon allspice; 1 teaspoon mace; ½ cup cold water; 1 pint strong vinegar; beet juice (optional)

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 the eggs

Boil the eggs hard and remove the shells.

Make the pickling liquid

Place the cinnamon, allspice, and mace in a muslin bag and submerge in cold water.
Boil the water with the spices; if it reduces, add more water to make ½ cup.
Add 1 pint of strong vinegar to the spice-infused water.

Pickle

Pour the mixture over the eggs.
For colored eggs, add beet juice to the mixture.

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.

Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,189 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Allspice + vinegartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,548 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).
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 main body of the dish, which takes on flavour as it soaks.
Strong vinegar: Adds acidity that preserves the eggs and gives the pickled tang.
Cinnamon: Adds warm aroma and sweet spice flavour to the pickling liquid.
Allspice: Adds aromatic, peppery-sweet spice flavour to the pickling liquid.
Mace: Adds a delicate, warm aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the water with the spices and keep it at ½ cup. Boiling extracts flavour from the spices into the water, so the liquid carries the seasoning. Replacing water lost to reduction keeps the vinegar-to-water ratio and the liquid volume correct for the eggs to be fully submerged and evenly flavoured.