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Egg Appetizer

Hard‑boiled eggs topped with a mayonnaise and Worcestershire sauce mixture served on lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Egg Appetizer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hard boil the eggs.

  2. Pass the eggs through a fruit press or colander.

  3. Pack the egg mixture into coffee cups or any mold.

  4. Turn out the molded eggs onto lettuce leaves.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine green pepper, pepper sauce, tomato ketchup, salt, pepper, onion, mayonnaise, and Worcestershire sauce to make the sauce.

Serve

  1. Before serving, place 2 tablespoons of sauce on each portion.

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.

  1. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lettuce + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Form the main body of the dish, setting firm when hard boiled and mashed into a molded base.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, making the mashed yolk mixture smooth and creamy.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the sauce, balancing the rich mayonnaise.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury depth and a touch of acidity to the sauce.
Onion
Adds aroma and sharpness that cut through the richness of the eggs and mayonnaise.

The step that matters

Pack the egg mixture into the mold. The mashed egg must be packed firmly so the molded shapes hold together when turned out onto the lettuce. Loose packing makes the eggs crumble when unmolded.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, lettuce, pepper, sauce, tomato, ketchup):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lettuce, pepper, sauce, tomato, ketchup. 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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