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Stuffed Eggs

Stuffed eggs with forcemeat, anchovy paste, or dressed spinach, served on croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,260 recipes. Both carry hexanol, which smells green, fruity. The science ↓

Stuffed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the egg whites in half and wash them well.

  2. Keep the halves in water until ready to use.

  3. Cut the bread into small round shapes using a cookie cutter.

  4. Fry the bread shapes in hot oil until golden brown.

Assemble

  1. Place each egg white half on a crouton of bread.

  2. Fill the egg white halves with forcemeat.

  3. Optionally, fill some halves with anchovy paste and others with dressed spinach.

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. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Chicken + spinachtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,146 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Anchovy + spinachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together74 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Form the edible shell that holds the filling in each piece.
Croutons of bread
Provide a crisp, golden base that supports each egg white half.
Forcemeat
Supplies the savory filling that sits inside the egg white halves.

The step that matters

Frying the bread shapes. Bread that is fried in oil that is not hot enough absorbs excess fat and turns greasy rather than crisp. Frying in hot oil until golden brown sets a crisp surface and gives the base its color and flavor.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, chicken, anchovy):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, chicken, anchovy. 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 stuffed eggs recipes

Anchovy 8Mushroom 4Cheese 3Spinach 3 See all 127 →

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