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Deviled Eggs

Hard-boiled eggs filled with a seasoned yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Deviled Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the eggs

  1. Place eggs in a pot of boiling water and cook for 20 minutes, stirring gently once or twice in the first 5 minutes.

  2. Transfer eggs to cold water until completely cool.

Prepare the filling

  1. Shell the eggs and cut them in half lengthwise.

  2. Carefully remove the yolks and place the whites on a platter.

  3. Chop the yolks and mix with parsley, pepper, and enough salad dressing to moisten.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the egg whites with the yolk mixture, rounding slightly over the top.

  2. Serve on a bed of lettuce leaves.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the structure of the whites and the rich, creamy yolk filling.
Salad dressing
Adds moisture, tang and sweetness to the chopped yolks, making them spreadable.

The step that matters

Cool the eggs completely before shelling. Rapid cooling in cold water stops the cooking and helps prevent a grey-green ring forming around the yolk. Cooled eggs are also firmer and easier to shell cleanly without tearing the whites.

“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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