Name: Deviled Eggs
Ingredients: 6 hard-boiled eggs; 2 teaspoons vinegar; 1 teaspoon celery seed; 1 teaspoon mustard; coarse sea salt to taste; black pepper to taste; lettuce leaves for serving

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Deviled Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

Boil the eggs hard and let them cool.
Cut the eggs in half and remove the yolks.

Make the filling and serve

Mix the yolks with vinegar, celery seed, mustard, salt, and pepper until moistened.
Refill the egg halves with the yolk mixture.
Serve on lettuce leaves.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks: Provide the rich, creamy base that the filling is built on.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the rich yolk filling.
Mustard: Adds sharp flavour that balances the richness of the yolks.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, vinegar, mustard, pepper, lettuce):

Tarragonfits better
Capersfits better
Dillfits better
Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, mustard, pepper, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.