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Dessert

Egg Pie

A sweet pie made with hard‑boiled egg yolks, beef suet, sugar, dates, currants, apple, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Rose and currant work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 494 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Egg Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mince the hard-boiled egg yolks very small.

  2. Combine the minced yolks with the beef suet, salt, spices, lemon peel, rose water, sugar, dates, currants, and chopped apple. Mix all ingredients together thoroughly.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill a dish with the mixture and bake until set.

  2. Serve with a sprinkle of mace on top.

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. Rose + curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Dates + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Lemon + rosetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Provide the bulk and a firm, rich body that sets when baked.
Beef suet
Adds fat that gives a moist, tender texture to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning during baking.
Dates
Add concentrated sweetness and a soft, chewy texture.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout the filling.
Apple
Adds moisture and mild acidity that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg yolks set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves a runny filling, while overbaking can make it dry and rubbery, so watch for a firm centre.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, beef, lemon, rose, sugar, currant, apple):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, beef, lemon, rose, sugar, currant, apple. 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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