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Stuffed Eggs with Parsley

Hard-boiled eggs filled with a butter, parsley, cornflour, anchovy essence, and cream mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 with Parsley

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Shell the hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Cut them in half lengthwise.

  3. Remove the yolks.

Make the filling

  1. Pound the yolks in a mortar with butter, chopped parsley, cornflour, essence of anchovy, and cream.

  2. Heat the mixture in a small saucepan until it boils, seasoning with pepper and salt.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the egg halves with the sauce.

  2. Arrange the eggs on a warm dish.

  3. Drizzle with a rich parsley or maître d'hôtel sauce before serving.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,702 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 whites that hold the filling and the yolks that form the base of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the yolk mixture.
Cornflour
Thickens the yolk mixture so it holds its shape when heated.
Cream
Adds moisture and softens the filling for a smoother texture.
Essence of anchovy
Adds a salty, savoury depth to the filling.

The step that matters

Heating the filling until it boils. Cornflour is a starch that thickens only when heated to a boil. Stopping short leaves the filling loose, while overheating can cause it to scorch on the bottom of the pan or break the emulsion of butter and cream.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, anchovy, cream, 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.

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