Name: Stuffed Eggs
Ingredients: 12 hard boiled eggs; ½ cup nuts; 3 pickles, chopped fine; ½ cup vinegar; 2 tablespoons butter; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon mustard; 1 egg yolk; lettuce leaves for garnish

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 ↓

Stuffed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the hard-boiled eggs in half and remove the yolks.

Make the filling

In a bowl, combine the yolks, nuts, pickles, vinegar, butter, salt, and mustard, and mix the combined ingredients well.

Fill and serve

Fill the egg whites with the yolk mixture.
Serve on a platter garnished with 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).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Nuts + lettucetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together174 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,370 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Nuts + mustardtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together39 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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.
Butter: Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture in the filling.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the rich yolk filling.
Mustard: Adds sharp, pungent flavor that balances the richness of the yolks.
Pickles: Add tangy, acidic bits and a crunchy texture to the filling.

Swap the nuts

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

Sesamefits better
Lentilsfits better
Beansfits better
Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, butter, mustard, 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.