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Devilled Egg's

Hard‑boiled eggs coated in beaten egg, oil, salt, cayenne, and served with olive oil and chutney sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,649 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Devilled Egg's

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs until hard, then cool and peel them.

  2. Dip each egg in beaten raw egg, then in oil, and roll in salt and cayenne.

Heat and serve

  1. Make a tray from oiled paper, place the eggs in it, and heat over a clear fire until hot.

  2. Heat equal quantities of olive oil and chutney sauce.

  3. Place the eggs on a hot dish, pour the sauce around them, garnish with parsley, and serve.

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. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  2. Olive + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Sauce + parsleytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + olivetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,340 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the main body of the dish, with the boiled white and yolk as the core.
Beaten raw egg
Acts as a binding coat so the salt and cayenne adhere to the boiled egg.
Olive oil
Carries fat and flavour, helping the coating adhere and adding richness to the sauce.
Chutney sauce
Adds sweetness and acidity to the warm sauce poured around the eggs.

The step that matters

Heating the eggs in the oiled paper tray. Heating over a clear fire needs care, because too much heat can scorch the oiled paper and the coating, while too little leaves the eggs cool. Gentle, even heat warms the eggs through without burning the outside.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, olive, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, sauce. 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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