Name: Devilled Eggs
Ingredients: 6 hard-boiled eggs; 2 teaspoons mustard; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; 1 teaspoon vinegar

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Devilled Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

Boil the eggs until hard.
Remove the shells.
Cut the eggs in half.
Take out the yolks.

Fill and serve

Mix the yolks with mustard, salt, pepper, parsley, and vinegar.
Spoon the mixture back into the egg whites.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,588 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Provide the whites that hold the filling and the yolks that form the creamy base.
Mustard: Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts the richness of the yolks.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the filling and balances the rich yolks.