Skip to main content
Main

Modern Cookery

Eggs filled with a paste of yolks, butter, anchovies, mace, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mace and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the eggs until perfectly cold, then halve them lengthwise.

  2. Remove the yolks and pound them to a paste with ⅓ cup of fresh butter.

Fill and season

  1. Add the anchovies, ¼ teaspoon of mace, and cayenne pepper to the mixture.

  2. Beat the mixture thoroughly and fill the egg whites neatly with it.

  3. Optionally, blend in a small amount of garlic for added flavor.

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. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
Yolks form a rich, creamy paste that becomes the filling, while whites hold it.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and moisture, making the pounded yolks smooth and spreadable.
Anchovies
Contribute a salty, savory depth that seasons the filling.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture thoroughly. Thorough beating breaks up the yolk and butter into a smooth, uniform paste. Lumps or unmixed pockets make the filling uneven in texture and flavor and harder to pipe neatly into the whites.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, 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.

You might also like

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