A generous cook, a selfless cook, shares her recipes. She does it gladly because she's flattered to have been asked to pass along something that has brought others pleasure and full stomachs.

I am a stingy cook. I share, albeit reluctantly. Thing of it is, I love having a secret weapon, that one ingredient that's hard to identify, that's so subtle it makes a dish a parlor game. It's turmeric! No, wait a minute, it's coriander! Butter, it has got to be butter!

LOUIE FAVORITE/lfavorite@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Home restaurant chef Richard Blais thinks of egg whites as a canvas upon which he can unleash an artist's creativity.

LOUIE FAVORITE/lfavorite@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Chef Richard Blais tops deviled eggs with a cherry tomato, pimento cheese and duck confit.

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Great deviled eggs require a secret weapon. Something to ensure that every indentation in the tray is emptied in rapid-fire succession, that those creamy little halves are popped into the mouth like so much hot buttered popcorn.

After playing the guessing game for the better part of a cocktail party, during which she consumed nearly a dozen of said eggs, a former co-worker tried to strong-arm me for the recipe. I demurred. Back at work, she cornered me in the hallway. I hemmed. She sent me e-mails. I hawed.

She kept at it, her tone increasingly insistent to the point that suggested she was having some odd form of yolk withdrawal. Finally, with no place left to hide, I broke down and forked over the recipe.

Missing from the ingredient list, however, was a dash of something special, that one thing that made the flavor unique, or at least what I thought was unique.

Picking up momentum

Am I ashamed of such selfish behavior after all these years? Just a little.

I was reminded of this long-ago incident while nibbling a deviled egg at Maxim Prime last month. The dollop of caviar glistening with tears of truffle oil, the fleck of gold leaf shimmering atop it all like a stripper's pastie; yes, they were sassy. But once past that dazzling garnish, what rested in the pristine egg cup was a basic deviled egg, fine and just on the dry side of creamy. It was kind of like finding a pretty girl beneath all the sequins and makeup.

All over town, and across the country, of-the-moment restaurants are serving deviled eggs, each with their own spin, their own what-is-that? element.

To call it an emerging trend is a stretch. Certainly for the past five or six years, gussied-up eggs have crept onto cocktail menus and been offered as small plates here and there. Now they seem to be everywhere at once: Cakes & Ale in Decatur, Home restaurant in Buckhead, Maxim Prime downtown, JCT Kitchen on Howell Mill Road.

But boiled eggs with a dressed-up yolk have been around since ancient Romans poured sauces of wine, honey, pine nuts and herbs on them. By the Renaissance, eggs stuffed with savory spices were common. So when did they get the devil in them?

In 1849, Mistress Margaret Dobs described "deviling" in her book, "The Cook and Housewife's Manual," though she was referencing meat. Deviling was achieved by adding "scorching heat or tear-compelling pungency" to food, she wrote. Among the list of ingredients: salt, pepper, cayenne, curry, mushroom, anchovy or truffle powder, and "must be administered at the discretion of the consumer."

Today, there's a good chance of getting all those ingredients in one egg at a restaurant.

Comfort food

What's the enduring appeal? Richard Gutman, director of the Culinary Arts Museum at Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island, said it's a simple combination of textures.

"It's just a more pleasing mouth feel, with the pungent, slightly drier yolk and the cooler, more firm white," Gutman said.

Like other dishes that have been fetishized recently, such as designer macaroni and cheese and riffs on meatloaf, this latest interest in deviled eggs rode in on many streams: the slow food movement, the comfort food wave that began with a ripple after Sept. 11, 2001, and, to some degree, the same nostalgic urge that brought knitting back then pronounced it hip. (Could embroidery and potpies be next?)

"With the economy going to hell, the war dragging on and gas prices so high, you're talking about a lot of depressing things going on, and people are drawn back to the comfort thing," said David Roberts, executive chef at Alon's.

Deviled eggs are a popular staple at the two gourmet eateries in Morningside and Dunwoody. They are made with a traditional mayonnaise base, though at Easter he dyes the yolks with extracts of beets, spinach or saffron. Despite the recent surge in egg prices, chicken eggs are still relatively cheap ingredients to work with.

"Whether you're in a mom-and-pop shop or a five-star restaurant, you can do a deviled egg," Roberts said. "It takes very little investment and they're easy to dress up. Eggs and truffles are as traditional as you can get, or put bacon and cheese on them and call them what you want."

Beyond the chicken

Perhaps to make them seem less homely or common, some chefs pass on chicken eggs altogether and use duck eggs or quail eggs, as chef Cathal Armstrong does at Restaurant Eve in Alexandria, Va.

Each night, tiny quail eggs are boiled, shelled, halved and gently relieved of their yolks. Then the yolks are mashed with mayonnaise, seasoned with salt and cayenne and returned to their whites. Back in 2004, he topped them with Osetra caviar and set them atop brioche.

Now he grates bottarga di tonno (dried tuna roe) against a microplane, allowing the roe to settle across the top of the yolks with a sophistication paprika could never approximate.

"I don't know that they reach the quality of a first course, but in this application as a canape, it's perfect," said Alex Dreyer, Eve's chef de cuisine.

Richard Blais, chef of Home restaurant, uses duck eggs to make his offering "a little more unique."

The eggs are also three times more expensive than chicken eggs.

The former "Top Chef" contestant, who once described himself as "tough as an artichoke," looks at the naked yolk and white like pizza dough, ready to receive whatever he tops it with. That might be duck confit, pulled brisket, fried fish, poached cherry tomatoes, butter pickles or pimento cheese.

"I look in the fridge every day and see what we've got, and if we've only got a couple of something, then we'll find a way to use it," Blais said.

After going through 350 chicken eggs to write her 2004 book "Deviled Eggs: 50 Recipes From Simple to Sassy," author and former Raleigh News and Observer food editor Debbie Moose tried turkey eggs.

Not only were they sort of huge, "they had a little different flavor," Moose said. "I suppose you could go too far in trying different eggs and ingredients, but I haven't seen it yet."

This from a woman who has blended yolks with coconut flakes and cocoa before returning them to the whites.

Moose swears the cocoa version is worth a try, but I doubt I'll ever attempt to pass that off as a secret ingredient. But to my former co-worker I say: If you're reading this, next time you try my deviled egg recipe, add a rounded quarter teaspoon of turmeric.