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Eggs for Lunch

Hard‑boiled eggs filled with a mustard and butter yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Eggs for Lunch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs hard.

  2. Let them cool.

  3. Remove the shells.

  4. Cut the eggs in half lengthwise.

  5. Remove the yolks.

Make the filling

  1. Crumble the yolks in a bowl.

  2. Add salt, pepper, mustard, and melted butter. Mix well.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the hollows of the egg whites with the mixture.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

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

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, carrying the flavour of the other ingredients.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the yolk filling become smooth and creamy.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that cuts through the richness of the yolks and butter.

The step that matters

Mix well. Mixing the crumbled yolks thoroughly with butter and mustard makes the filling smooth and evenly seasoned. Lumps of dry yolk or pockets of unmixed butter would make the filling uneven in texture and flavour.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, 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.

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