Name: Egg Salad I
Ingredients: 6 hard-boiled eggs; lettuce leaves; mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Egg and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and 3,301 recipes mention both. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Egg Salad I

Ingredients

6 hard-boiled eggs
lettuce leaves
mayonnaise dressing

Directions

Cut the hard-boiled eggs in half.
Place the egg halves on lettuce leaves.
Serve with mayonnaise dressing.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Egg + lettucetop 30% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together3,301 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs: Provide the main body and protein of the dish, with a firm, sliceable texture.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds moisture, richness and fat that coat the eggs and lettuce.

“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.