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Anchovy Eggs

A dish of hard‑boiled eggs filled with a smooth anchovy paste and garnished with watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 the eggs

  1. Cut the hard-boiled eggs in half.

  2. Carefully remove the yolks.

  3. Trim the ends of the egg whites so they can stand upright.

Prepare the anchovies

  1. Wash the anchovies.

  2. Bone the anchovies.

  3. Dry the anchovies.

  4. Coarsely chop the anchovies.

Make the filling

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

  2. Gradually add the essence of anchovy and white sauce until a thick paste forms.

  3. Season to taste.

  4. Strain through a fine sieve.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the egg white halves with the mixture.

  2. Garnish with watercress seasoned with oil and vinegar.

  3. Serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Sauce + watercresstop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together295 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + watercresstop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Provide the salty, savoury flavour that defines the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Supply the cooked whites as edible cups and the yolks as the creamy base of the filling.
White sauce
Binds the pounded yolks and anchovies into a thick, spreadable paste.
Essence of anchovy
Intensifies the anchovy flavour of the paste.

The step that matters

Strain through a fine sieve.. Pounded yolks and anchovies can stay lumpy with fibres and bits of bone; straining through a fine sieve gives the smooth, even texture the paste needs to pipe or fill neatly into the whites.

“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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