Name: Stuffed Eggs
Ingredients: eggs; butter; coarse sea salt; black pepper; mustard; vinegar; oil; chopped olives; chopped parsley

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 ↓

Stuffed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the eggs for 20 minutes.
Remove the shells and cut the eggs in half lengthwise, keeping the whites intact.
Remove the yolks and mash them with a spoon.
Mix the yolks with butter, salt, pepper, mustard, vinegar, oil, chopped olives, and chopped parsley to taste.
Fill the egg whites with the yolk mixture.
Press the halves together and wrap them in white paper.

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).
Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,649 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,950 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,588 recipes

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

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, butter, pepper, vinegar, olive, parsley):

Capsicumfits better
Shallotfits better
Chivefits about as well
Mustardthe original

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