Skip to main content
Main

Potted Eggs

A dish of hard‑boiled eggs mashed with anchovy sauce, butter, salt, pepper, and chopped whites, topped with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Potted Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Pound the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs with anchovy sauce.

  2. Mix in the butter to form a paste.

  3. Season with salt and white pepper.

  4. Chop the egg whites very small.

Pot and seal

  1. Fill small pots with the paste, adding the chopped whites.

  2. Cover the tops with clarified butter.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Pound into a smooth, rich paste that forms the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, binding the yolks into a spreadable paste.
Anchovy sauce
Adds savory, salty depth that gives the paste its character.
Clarified butter
Forms a seal over the tops, excluding air and helping the pots keep.

The step that matters

Pounding the yolks smooth with the anchovy sauce. If the yolks are not pounded fine and mixed evenly with the butter, the paste stays grainy and lumpy instead of smooth and spreadable. Fat from the butter coats the yolk particles, so thorough working gives an even texture.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, anchovy, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes