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Anchovy Eggs

A dish of hard‑boiled eggs filled with a mixture of yolks, butter, anchovy paste, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Egg and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,330 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Anchovy Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the eggs in half and remove the yolks.

  2. Trim a small piece off the ends of the egg whites so they can stand upright.

Fill and finish

  1. Mash the yolks with the butter and anchovy paste.

  2. Fill the egg whites with the yolk mixture.

  3. Use a piping bag fitted with a rose tube to pipe some mixture on top of each egg half.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Anchovy + peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the white shells that hold the filling and the rich yolk base.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, making the mashed yolk filling smooth and creamy.
Anchovy paste
Supplies salty, savoury flavour that gives the filling its character.

“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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