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Surprise Eggs

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Surprise Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the eggs hard and cut a small piece off the pointed end to stand them upright.

  2. Carefully remove the yolks without damaging the whites.

  3. Pound the yolks in a mortar and mix with pounded anchovies, butter, Nepal pepper, and bread crumbs.

  4. Form the mixture into small balls and fill the egg whites.

  5. Prepare a salad with finely chopped lettuce, endive, tarragon, and chervil.

  6. Place the filled eggs on the salad and garnish with chopped beetroot.

  7. Prepare a brown sauce and add halved hard-boiled eggs, olives, and button mushrooms.

  8. Warm the sauce thoroughly and serve, garnished with fried bread sippets.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Endive + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

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

  5. Endive + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Lettucethe original
  4. Leekfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, pepper, bread, endive, tarragon, chervil. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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