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Anchovy Eggs

Hard-boiled eggs filled with a butter and anchovy paste mixture, garnished with parsley and cress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Anchovy Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the shells from the eggs and cut them in half.

  2. Take out the yolks and place them in a bowl.

Make the filling

  1. Add the butter and anchovy essence or paste to the yolks and mash well.

  2. Season with a little pepper and mix in the chopped parsley.

  3. Fill the egg halves with the mixture and trim the tips to make them stand.

Serve

  1. Arrange the eggs on a dish and surround with small cress or other small salad before serving.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Parsley + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,702 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the base structure, with the yolks forming the mashed filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, making the yolk mixture smooth and creamy.
Anchovy essence or paste
Supplies a salty, savoury flavour that gives the filling its character.

The step that matters

Trim the tips to make them stand. Trimming too much removes the rounded base and the halves may wobble or break, while leaving too much leaves them unable to sit flat and stable on the dish.

“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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