Why it works: Chicken and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,421 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓
Egg Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the eggs
Cut the hard boiled eggs in half crosswise, creating small points on the tops of the halves.
Remove the yolks and mash them.
Make the filling
Mix the mashed yolks with an equal amount of finely chopped cooked chicken.
Moisten the mixture with oil dressing.
Shape the mixture into balls the size of the original yolks and refill the egg whites.
Serve
Arrange the filled egg whites on lettuce leaves and serve with additional oil dressing.
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.
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Chicken + lettucetop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,421 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Egg + chickentop 30% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,991 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Egg + lettucetop 30% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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.
- Cooked chicken
- Adds bulk and a firmer, meaty texture to the mashed yolk mixture.
- Oil dressing
- Adds moisture and fat, keeping the yolk filling soft and binding it together.
The step that matters
Moisten the mixture with oil dressing. Too little dressing leaves the mashed yolk and chicken crumbly and hard to shape, while too much makes the filling loose and greasy. Adding it gradually helps the mixture hold together.
Swap the lettuce
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, chicken):
- Asparagusfits better
- Capsicumfits better
- Potatofits better
- Lettucethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, chicken. 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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