Why it works: Olive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓
Egg Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Boil and cool
Boil the eggs for 20 minutes.
Transfer the eggs to cold water until cool.
Prepare the filling
Peel the eggs and cut them in half lengthwise.
Carefully remove the yolks without breaking the whites.
Mash the yolks and moisten with mayonnaise dressing.
Stir in the chopped olives.
Serve
Fill the egg whites with the yolk mixture and serve on a bed of lettuce leaves.
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.
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Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,580 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Egg + lettucetop 30% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,301 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Egg + olivetop 31% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together15,340 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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 mashed yolks that form the body of the salad.
- Mayonnaise dressing
- Adds moisture and richness, binding the mashed yolks into a smooth, spreadable filling.
- Olives
- Add salty, briny flavour that contrasts with the rich yolk filling.
The step that matters
Carefully remove the yolks without breaking the whites. Whites that tear or crack leave gaps that the filling can leak through and make the halves hard to fill neatly. Gentle handling, especially after the eggs have cooled fully, keeps the whites intact to hold the yolk mixture.
Swap the lettuce
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, olive):
- Capsicumfits better
- Asparagusfits better
- Tomatofits better
- Lettucethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“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.
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