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Hard-boiled eggs filled with a mixture of anchovies, butter, mace, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Halve the hard-boiled eggs lengthwise and remove the yolks.

  2. Pound the yolks with ⅓ cup of fresh butter until smooth.

  3. Add the anchovies, 1 teaspoon of ground mace, and ¼ teaspoon of cayenne pepper; mix thoroughly.

  4. Fill the egg whites with the mixture neatly.

  5. Optionally, blend in a small amount of garlic for added flavor.

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. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
The yolks form the creamy filling, while the whites hold the mixture.
Butter
Fat that blends with the yolks to make the filling smooth and rich.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth that stands out in the filling.
Ground mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the filling.
Cayenne pepper
Adds a mild, lingering heat to the filling.

The step that matters

Pound the yolks with butter until smooth. Mashing yolks with fat until fully smooth emulsifies them into a uniform, creamy filling. Lumps left at this stage carry through to the finished texture.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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