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Devilled Eggs

Devilled Eggs are boiled eggs topped with a mustard and chutney sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Devilled Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, melt 1 oz of butter.

  2. Add cream, salt, and cayenne; bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in egg yolks, mustard, and chutney until thickened, but do not boil.

  4. Add chopped ham and chili to the sauce.

Serve

  1. Arrange boiled eggs on a hot dish, pour sauce over them.

  2. Garnish with triangular croutons of fried bread.

  3. Serve very hot.

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

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

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  5. Mustard + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together747 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks (in the method)
Thicken the cream sauce as they gently set, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Cream
Forms the base of the sauce, adding richness and a silky texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce base.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the sauce.
Chutney
Adds sweetness and acidity to balance the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks without boiling. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat as their proteins set. If the sauce boils, the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving it grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, ham, bread, butter, cream):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, ham, bread, butter, cream. 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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