Name: Deviled Eggs
Ingredients: 8 eggs; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 1 teaspoon melted butter or olive oil; juice of 1 lemon; lettuce leaves for serving

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Deviled Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Boil the eggs for 1 hour.
Cut each egg in half and place the yolks in a dish.

Make the filling

Add salt, pepper, melted butter or olive oil, and lemon juice to the yolks.
Use a knife to mix the yolk mixture into a paste.
Fill each egg half with the yolk mixture and reassemble the halves.

Serve

Serve on lettuce leaves.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Whites form the shell-like holders and yolks provide the rich, creamy filling.
Butter or olive oil: Adds fat that makes the yolk filling smooth and rich.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the rich yolk filling.