Brunch Deviled Eggs with Bacon

Steam eggs instead of boiling for easier peeling. Older eggs (10-14 days) peel more easily. The sour cream adds tanginess and helps the filling stay creamy. Cook bacon until very crispy so it stays crunchy on top of the eggs.

Deviled eggs have a history that stretches back to ancient Rome. Britannica confirms that "the earliest precursors to the deviled egg date to ancient Rome," where boiled eggs were seasoned with spicy sauces and served as part of the gustatio — the appetiser course that opened Roman meals. The Romans were so accustomed to beginning dinner with eggs that the phrase "ab ova usque ad mala," meaning "from eggs to apples," became a Latin expression for the entire span of a meal, from first course to last. The earliest documented stuffed egg recipe, however, is from 13th-century Andalusia in southern Spain: a text from al-Tujibī's Fadalat al-Khiwan describes halving hardboiled eggs, mixing the yolks with cilantro, onion juice, pepper, coriander, and fish sauce, stuffing the mixture back into the whites, and fastening the halves together with small sticks before seasoning with pepper. By the 15th century, stuffed eggs had spread throughout Europe, appearing in medieval cookbooks with fillings of raisins, cheese, marjoram, and mint, often fried in oil and dusted with sugar. The specific word "deviled" entered the culinary vocabulary in 18th-century Britain. The NIBBLE food history publication documents the first known printed use as a culinary term in Great Britain in 1786, referring to highly spiced fried or broiled dishes; by 1800, "deviling" had become a verb for making food piquant. Britannica notes the name alludes to "the Devil and the blistering heat of hell." In American culinary tradition deviled eggs became a fixture of Southern tables and post-war party spreads, and the addition of crispy bacon crumbles — a brunch evolution — is a modern American touch that made a very old preparation feel new again.