Name: Egg Sandwich
Ingredients: 4 hard cooked eggs; salt to taste; pepper to taste; 1 tablespoon chopped pimento; 1 tablespoon mayonnaise; slices of buttered bread

Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Egg Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

Chop the whites of the hard-cooked eggs finely.
Force the yolks through a potato ricer.
Mix the yolks and whites together.
Season with salt and pepper, then moisten with mayonnaise.

Assemble

Spread the mixture between thin slices of buttered bread.

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.

Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together50,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Hard cooked eggs: Form the bulk of the filling, providing set protein texture and rich flavor.
Mayonnaise: Moistens the chopped egg, adding fat and a smooth, creamy texture.
Chopped pimento: Adds mild sweetness and color to the filling.

“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.