Deviled eggs

The first recipes for stuffed, hard-boiled were printed in medieval European texts. These cooks stuffed their eggs with raisins, cheese and sweet spices. Platina's De Honesta Voluptate [15th century Italian text] instructs cooks thusly:

"28. Stuffed eggs
Make fresh eggs hard by cooking for a long time. Then, when the shells are removed, cut the eggs through the middle so that the white is not damaged. When the yolks are removed, pound part with raisins and good cheese, some fresh and some aged. Reserve part to color the mixture, and also add a little finely cut parsley, marjoram, and mint. Some put in two or more egg whites with spices. When the whites of the eggs have been stuffed with this mixture and closed, fry them over slow fire in oil. When they have been fried, add a sauce made from the rest of the egg yolks pounded with raisins and moistened with verjuice and must. Put in ginger, cloves, and cinnamon and heat them a little while with the eggs themselves. This has more harm than good in it."

---Platina: on the Right Pleasure and Good Health, Critical edition and translation of De Honesta Voluptate et Valetudine, Mary Ella Milham [Medival & Renaissance Texts & Studies:Tempe AZ] 1998

I decided to make deviled eggs today. Hence the above picture. I did not follow the above recipe and I'm not at all sure where to obtain items such as verjuice and must let alone know exactly what they are. Sounds nasty.

Anyway, I don't know the secret to boiling eggs without the shell cracking and extra bits of white poaching while the egg hard boils for five minutes. I do know that fresh eggs peel horribly so hard boil those older eggs, my friend, and peeling will be much easier. I didn't have any dill pickles so I dug out a bottle of Spanish olives stuffed with garlic, I used those for topping. The egg yolks were mixed with mayo and mustard, salt, pepper, paprika and celery seeds. Tasty.

I scooped the mixture into a plastic bag, sealed the bag, snipped a corner off and attempted to pipe the yolk mixture into the boiled egg whites. Unfortunately I neglected to mix the yolk sufficiently, so the larger bits of yolk jammed the hole and I had to essentially squeeze so hard the sealed part broke open and I had egg on my face so to speak. Eventually by dint of much scraping etc, I managed to fill the egg whites with the egg yolk mixture and top each of them with the dratted Spanish olives. I also tried to balance each egg on a cracker and while it makes eating the egg a bit easier, getting them all to stay in an attractive pattern on a plate is freaking impossible.