Skip to main content
Main

Deviled Eggs

Deviled eggs are hard‑boiled eggs filled with a mustard, pepper, salt, vinegar, and butter yolk mixture served chilled on lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Deviled Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for 20 minutes.

  2. Shell the eggs and cut them in half.

  3. Remove the yolks and mix with mustard, pepper, salt, and vinegar.

  4. Add melted butter to achieve a smooth paste.

Fill and serve

  1. Press the yolk mixture back into the egg halves.

  2. Chill before serving on lettuce leaves.

  3. For a lunch basket, wrap filled halves in paraffin paper.

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. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  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

Eggs
Provide the structure of the filling and the white shells that hold it.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that cuts the richness of the yolks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich yolk filling.
Melted butter
Adds fat that makes the yolk mixture smooth and creamy.

The step that matters

Add melted butter to achieve a smooth paste. Yolks are crumbly on their own. Fat from melted butter coats the yolk particles and helps them blend into a smooth, creamy filling. Adding it slowly while mixing helps prevent a greasy or lumpy result.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

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

More deviled eggs recipes

on Toast 3 See all 151 →

You might also like

Creamy Lettuce SoupCreamy Lettuce Soup8 recipesLettuce SoupLettuce Soup8 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes