Name: Egg Salad
Ingredients: 2 eggs; 1 cup lettuce, chopped; 1 tablespoon butter; 5 boiled leeks, chopped; 1 cup beet greens, chopped

Why it works: Lettuce and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 217 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Egg Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the eggs until hard, then cool and peel them.
Chop the eggs and mix with lettuce, butter, leeks, and beet greens.
Serve chilled.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Lettuce + leektop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together217 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Butter + leektop 15% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together848 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Egg + leektop 23% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together294 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Lettuce + buttertop 25% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together2,287 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Provide the main body and protein structure of the salad.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the mix.
Leeks: Contribute a mild onion-like flavour and some texture.

Flavor stand-ins for the lettuce

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

Chivebetter flavor fit
Shallotbetter flavor fit
Asparagusbetter flavor fit
Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, leek. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.