Name: Stuffed Eggs
Ingredients: 12 hard boiled eggs; 1 tablespoon bread crumbs; 2 tablespoons water; ½ tablespoon butter; ¼ teaspoon minced onion; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon minced parsley; 1 pinch cayenne pepper

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

Prepare the filling

Peel and slice the eggs lengthwise through the center.
Remove the yolks and cream them with butter, onion, parsley, water, bread crumbs, salt, and cayenne pepper.

Stuff and heat

Spoon the mixture back into the egg whites.
Spread a little butter over each stuffed egg.
Place in the oven to heat thoroughly.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (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 egg whites that hold the filling and the yolks that form the stuffing base.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture to the yolk filling and helps the tops brown lightly when heated.
Bread crumbs: Absorb moisture and give the creamed yolk filling a firmer, less runny texture.

Swap the onion

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

Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Chivefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, butter, parsley, pepper. 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.