Name: Egg and Cheese Salad
Ingredients: eggs; ¾ tablespoon grated cheese; salt to taste; cayenne pepper to taste; a few grains of mustard; vinegar to moisten; melted butter to moisten

Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Egg and Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs as you would for egg salad.
Add ¾ tablespoon of grated cheese to the egg yolks.
Season with salt, cayenne pepper, and a few grains of mustard.
Moisten the mixture with vinegar and melted butter.
Serve with or without salad dressing.

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 + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,805 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cheese + vinegartop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together922 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

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

Swap the mustard

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

Capsicumfits about as well
Mustardthe original
Asparagusfits less well
Potatofits less well

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