Skip to main content
Main

Pickled Eggs

Hard-boiled eggs pickled in a spiced vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Pickled Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs until hard-boiled and let them cool completely.

  2. Remove the shells from the eggs and place them in a jar.

Pickle

  1. Boil the vinegar with the spices, peppercorns, bay leaf, and a little salt.

  2. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the eggs.

  3. Once cooled, seal the jar and store for several weeks before using.

Serve

  1. To serve, slice the eggs thinly.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,415 recipes
  4. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + macetop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,587 recipes

Egg and vinegar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 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 main body of the dish, which firms as the proteins set and then softens while pickling.
Vinegar
Acidity that penetrates the eggs over time, giving the pickled flavour and preserving the eggs.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavour that infuses into the vinegar and eggs.
Peppercorns
Contribute gentle, pungent aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Store for several weeks before using. The vinegar needs time to penetrate the egg whites and flavour the yolks; eating them too early leaves the eggs sharp on the outside and bland inside.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, clove. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes