Our family has held a long and lasting loving appetite for homemade deviled eggs.
Years ago, it was always my late Auntie Lilly’s simple recipe specialty (garnished with a drop of ketchup!) to bring on her special ceramic dimpled platter.
My late sister-in-law Linda, oldest brother Tom’s wife, took over deviled egg duty in recent years, taking turns with myself and alternating with my oldest sister Pam to whip up our own creative ingredient variations.
Author Debbie Moose, of Raleigh, North Carolina, is such a fan of filled boiled eggs, two decades ago she decided it was time for an entire hardcover cookbook dedicated to deviled eggs. The result was “Deviled Eggs” (Harvard Common Press, 2004), which is crammed with inviting photography, fun facts and tips to make readers want to whip up a batch of these appetizer favorites on the spot.
It was her first cookbook, which made her a special interview when we chatted years back just as I was working on my own second published cookbook.
Moose was given just a 10-week deadline to do the 95-page, 50-recipe cookbook so it could be available in stores by Easter 2004. My own four cookbooks were usually 3- to 4-month deadline projects. Some of the resulting creations from the Moose Family kitchen were deviled eggs garnished with caviar and other variations with fillings blending blue cheese and minced chives.
“All of the recipes were eagerly received, except for one called ‘Devil’s Food Eggs’ that features a chocolate filling,” she told me.
“While creating the recipe, I thought the other thing people love as much as eating deviled eggs is chocolate, so why not combine them? Once the testing ladies got over their reservations and tried one, they agreed they made an equally pleasing combination.”
The history for boiling eggs and using the blended inside yolk with other ingredients dates to the days of the Ancient Romans. By the Middle Ages, added favorites like raisins, herbs and spices found their way into stuffed egg recipes. The term “deviled” is a reference to the “zesty spices” used to increase flavor, the same process of “deviled meats,” particularly ham. Today’s more familiar recipe variation using a mayonnaise blended yolk filling base came into favor in the 1940s once commercially jarred and sold mayonnaise became popular.