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Deviled Eggs

Deviled Eggs are hard‑boiled eggs filled with a seasoned yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,950 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Deviled Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Boil and prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the desired number of eggs for 20 minutes.

  2. Once cool, remove the shells and cut the eggs in half crosswise.

  3. Carefully take out the yolks without breaking the whites, keeping the whites together.

Make the filling

  1. Rub the yolks with a little melted butter until creamy.

  2. Add prepared mustard or chow-chow sauce, chopped pickles or olives, salt, and paprika to taste.

Assemble

  1. Fill the egg whites with the yolk mixture and place them together to form whole eggs.

  2. Secure the halves with wooden toothpicks.

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. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Butter + olivetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + mustardtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the whites that hold the filling and the creamy yolks that form it.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, making the yolks smooth and creamy.
Prepared mustard or chow-chow sauce
Adds sharpness and tang that balances the rich yolk filling.
Chopped pickles or olives
Add acidity and salty bite that cut through the richness of the yolks.

The step that matters

Carefully take out the yolks without breaking the whites. Egg whites are delicate and tear easily once cooked. Gentle handling keeps the halves intact, so they hold the filling and stay neat when reassembled.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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