Name: Devilled Eggs
Ingredients: 6 hard boiled eggs; 6 tablespoons devilled ham; lettuce leaves

Why it works: Egg and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,526 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Devilled Eggs

Ingredients

6 hard boiled eggs
6 tablespoons devilled ham
lettuce leaves

Directions

Prepare

Shell the hard boiled eggs and cut them in half.

Fill and serve

Remove the yolks and mix them with the devilled ham.
Put the yolk and ham mixture back into the egg whites.
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.

Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ham + lettucetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together276 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Egg + lettucetop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked 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 whites that hold the filling and the yolks that form the creamy base.
Devilled ham: Adds savoury, salty flavour and moisture to the mashed yolks.