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Anchovy Eggs

Anchovy Eggs: hard‑boiled eggs filled with a smooth anchovy and white sauce mixture, garnished with watercress, oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Anchovy Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the hard-boiled eggs in half and carefully remove the yolks.

  2. Trim the ends of the egg halves to help them stand upright.

  3. Wash, bone, and dry the anchovies, then chop them coarsely.

Make the filling

  1. Pound the chopped anchovies with the egg yolks until smooth.

  2. Gradually mix in the essence of anchovy and white sauce until a moist paste forms.

  3. Season to taste and pass through a fine sieve.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the egg white halves with the mixture and garnish with watercress dressed with oil and vinegar.

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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Watercress + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Anchovy + watercresstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Provide the salty, savory flavor that defines the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Supply the yolk for the filling and the white halves that hold it.
White sauce
Binds the pounded yolk and anchovy into a moist, spreadable paste.
Essence of anchovy
Intensifies the anchovy flavor throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Pound the anchovies with the yolks until smooth. Anchovy pieces left coarse make the filling gritty and uneven, so the paste needs thorough pounding. Passing it through a fine sieve then removes any remaining lumps and gives a smooth texture.

“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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