Skip to main content
Main

Anchovy Eggs

Eggs filled with a mixture of anchovy paste, butter, cream, lemon juice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Anchovy Eggs

four parts

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the eggs

  1. Place the eggs in boiling water and boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Plunge the eggs into cold water and remove the shells.

  3. Cut each egg in half and remove the yolks into a bowl.

Make the filling

  1. Add the butter and anchovy paste to the yolks and mix well.

  2. Season with salt and add the cream and lemon juice.

  3. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve and divide it into four parts.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill each egg half with the mixture and smooth the top with a knife dipped in cold water.

  2. Arrange the tops of the eggs neatly on top and garnish with parsley.

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

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

  2. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Anchovy + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together798 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Anchovy + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites form the structure, while the yolks become the creamy filling.
Anchovy paste
Adds a salty, savoury depth that gives the filling its main flavour.
Butter
Enriches the yolks, giving the filling a smooth, rich texture.
Cream
Loosens the yolk mixture, adding moisture for a softer, spreadable filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich yolk and anchovy flavours.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a wire sieve. Sieving breaks up lumps of cooked yolk so the filling becomes fine and smooth. Lumps would make the filling grainy and harder to pipe or spread neatly into the egg halves.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes