Deviled Eggs History

A Most Versatile Food the Deviled Egg

Yes, even deviled eggs have a history. It was common to serve deviled eggs at cocktail parties and picnics in post-WW II America. However deviled eggs didn’t originate in the U.S. The roots of this food can be traced back to ancient Rome, where eggs were boiled, seasoned with spicy sauces and served as a first course known as gustatio by wealthy patricians. . In Petronius’s satirical fiction “Satyricon,” written around 61 A.D., the wealthy freedman Trimalchio invited guests to a banquet in which the menu included fig-peckers (small songbirds) marinated in peppered egg yolk and stuffed into peahen eggs.

According to Apicius, a collection of Roman recipes compiled sometime between the fourth and fifth century A.D., boiled eggs were traditionally seasoned with oil, wine or broth and served with pepper and laser (which was also known as silphium, a plant driven to extinction by the first century A.D.). Another recipe called for poached

Medieval cookbooks contain recipes for boiled eggs that were often filled with raisins, cheese and herbs such as marjoram, parsley and mint and then fried in oil and either topped with a sauce of cinnamon, ginger, cloves and raisins with verjuice (a tart juice made from unripe fruits) or powdered with sugar and served hot. In the United States, stuffed eggs began making an appearance in cookbooks by the mid-19th century.

The first known printed mention of ‘devil’ as a culinary term appeared in Great Britain in 1786, in reference to dishes including hot ingredients or those that were highly seasoned and broiled or fried. By 1800, deviling became a verb to describe the process of making food spicy. But in some parts of the world, the popular egg hors d’oeuvres are referred to as “mimosa eggs,” “stuffed eggs,” “dressed eggs” or “salad eggs”—especially when served at church functions—in order to avoid an association with