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Anchovy Eggs

Egg halves filled with a seasoned anchovy and yolk mixture, served on lettuce and watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Anchovy Eggs

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Remove the shells from the eggs and cut them in half.

  2. Carefully take out the yolks without breaking the whites.

  3. Trim a small piece from the bottom of each egg white to help them stand firm.

Make the filling

  1. Mash the yolks with the butter, then mix in the anchovy paste, cayenne, black pepper, and lemon juice to taste.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

Fill and serve

  1. Using a piping bag, fill each egg white with the yolk mixture.

  2. Serve the filled eggs on a bed of lettuce and watercress.

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. Lettuce + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
The whites provide the structure that holds the filling, and the yolks form the creamy base.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the mashed yolks a smooth, spreadable texture.
Anchovy paste
Contributes a salty, savoury depth that gives the filling its main flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich yolk mixture and balances the anchovy.

The step that matters

Trim the bottom of each egg white. A small flat base lets the halved whites sit steadily on the plate. Without it they can roll or tip, and the piped filling may spill out.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Lettucethe original

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