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Stuffed Eggs

Hard-boiled eggs filled with a buttery bread and parsley mixture, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stuffed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the hard-boiled eggs in half lengthwise and scoop out the yolks.

  2. Pound the yolks in a mortar.

  3. Soak the bread in milk, then squeeze it and pound it with the yolks.

  4. Add the same weight of butter as the yolks.

  5. Chop the parsley and eschalots finely and add them to the mixture.

  6. Season with pepper and salt.

  7. Beat the mixture well and press it through a fine sieve.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the egg whites with the mixture, piling it up.

  2. Spread the remaining mixture in a baking dish and place the egg halves on top.

  3. Place the dish on hot coals and cover with a pan of hot coals.

  4. Serve very hot when nicely browned.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks form the rich, creamy base of the filling, and the whites hold it.
Bread
Soaked and squeezed, it adds body and a soft texture to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, making the yolk mixture smooth and moist.
Eschalots
Contribute a mild, savoury onion flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Press the mixture through a fine sieve. Sieving breaks up lumps from the pounded yolks, bread and butter, giving a smooth, even filling that pipes and fills the whites neatly.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, milk, 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.

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