Name: Egg Sandwich
Ingredients: 3 hard-boiled eggs; 2 tablespoons olive oil; ¼ teaspoon salt; cayenne pepper to taste; 1 tablespoon vinegar; 1 cup grated American cheese; buttered white bread; sour pickle for serving

Why it works: Cheese and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Egg Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs to a paste.
Add olive oil, salt, cayenne pepper, and vinegar; mix thoroughly.
Stir in the grated American cheese.

Assemble and serve

Spread the mixture lightly on slices of buttered white bread.
Serve with sour pickle.

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.

Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,297 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,263 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Olive + cheesetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,802 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs: Yolks form the creamy paste that gives the filling its body.
Olive oil: Adds fat that makes the yolk paste smooth and moist.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the rich yolk and cheese filling.
American cheese: Melts slightly into the filling, adding richness and savory flavor.

“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.