Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Deviled Eggs

On Sunday, I indulged my husband and myself with a modern recipe--spicy deviled eggs. 

The recipe I used comes from Martha Stewart's website of all places, and involves roasted peppers, mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, and hot sauce. I used Melinda's Extra Hot Sauce and substituted scorpion powder (a powder made from really hot scorpion peppers that looks just like paprika) for the poppy seeds called for in Martha's recipe. The result was delicious--so delicious that my husband posted about it on Google Plus.

Martha's recipe may be modern, but the concept of hard boiling eggs, slicing them, removing the cooked yolks, and replacing the yolks with something more interesting goes back at least to Roman times, according to the Food Timeline. Those egg dishes tended to be served with a sauce poured over them, unlike the modern idea of stuffed eggs as finger food.

Supposedly, spicy stuffed eggs were served in Andalusia in the 13th century CE.  Stuffed egg recipes start appearing in cookbooks in the 15th and 16th centuries.  According to Cecil Adams of the Straight Dope, the term "deviled eggs" for spicy stuffed eggs dates from the late 18th century. Today, it's possible to log onto the Internet and find a vast array of different deviled egg recipes, including recipes containing wasabi, salmon, pumpkin, peanut butter, and Old Bay spice, among others. All I know is that at every party I've attended that serves deviled eggs, the deviled eggs are the first item to vanish.  That says a lot about their enduring popularity.

EDIT:  (12/6/2014) I will be making deviled eggs for our family's Christmas brunch this year.  I'll probably use the spicy eggs recipe (or a similar one) and a more traditional one, probably this one with tarragon and mustard.

EDIT:  (12/29/2014).  The Dijon and tarragon eggs (tastefully decorated with a tarragon leaf and two red peppercorns apiece) were a success, as were the Old Bay eggs (which included a stalk of celery chopped into the egg mixture).

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