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Deviled Eggs

Hard-boiled eggs filled with seasoned yolk mixture, garnished with parsley and stuffed olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Deviled Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the eggs hard, then cut them in half and remove the yolks.

  2. Mash the yolks finely and season with salt, pepper, salad oil, butter, vinegar, and mustard.

  3. Press the yolk mixture back into the egg whites.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pin the two halves together with toothpicks.

  2. Wrap each egg in waxed paper for picnics.

  3. For variation, add grated horseradish mixed with vinegar to the yolks, and season with butter, salt, and pepper.

  4. Garnish each egg half with a sprig of parsley and half a stuffed olive.

  5. Serve on a bed of parsley.

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 + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Horseradish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 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

Egg yolks
Form the creamy base of the filling, giving richness and body.
Salad oil
Adds fat that makes the mashed yolk filling smooth and soft.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the yolk filling's texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich yolk mixture.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor that balances the richness of the yolks.

Swap the horseradish

The recipe marks horseradish as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, butter, vinegar, mustard, ham, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishthe original
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

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