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To Make an Egg-Pie

A savory pie made with hard-boiled eggs, suet or marrow, currants, and spices, baked and finished with butter and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Make an Egg-Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped eggs, suet or marrow, cinnamon, nutmeg, currants, cream, sweet wine, and rose water or orange-flower water.

  2. Fill the pie crust with the mixture and bake until set.

  3. Once baked, stir in the fresh butter and lemon juice.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Currant + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Cinnamon + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Currant + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Chopped eggs add body and help the filling set into a firm, sliceable texture.
Beef suet or marrow
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a moist, tender mouthfeel.
Currants
Provide sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit against the rich filling.
Fresh butter
Stirred in after baking, it adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet, rich filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves the filling runny, while overbaking can make it dry and rubbery. Check for a firm center before removing the pie.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, beef, cinnamon, nutmeg, cream, wine, rose):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, beef, cinnamon, nutmeg, cream, wine, rose. 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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