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Capers and Hard Boiled Eggs

A simple dish of sliced hard boiled eggs served on bread with capers, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,088 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Capers and Hard Boiled Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hard boil the eggs for 10 minutes, then place them in cold water.

  2. Remove the shells, cut off the ends, and slice the eggs thinly.

  3. Use a small glass to cut out rounds of bread.

Assemble

  1. Place a slice of egg on each piece of bread.

  2. Add three capers and a little pepper and salt on top.

  3. Make sure to drain the capers well before using.

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. Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Bread + caperstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Egg + caperstop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard boiled eggs
Forms the main filling, giving a soft, creamy, rich texture to each bite.
Bread
Acts as a sturdy base that holds the sliced egg and toppings.
Capers
Add briny, sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the egg.

The step that matters

Drain the capers well. Excess brine left on the capers can make the bread soggy and dilute their salty, tangy flavor on top of the egg.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, 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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