Name: Egg Sandwiches
Ingredients: 4 hard-boiled eggs; 2 tablespoons oil; 1 tablespoon vinegar; coarse sea salt to taste; paprika to taste; thinly sliced bread; butter for spreading

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Egg Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Peel and chop the hard-boiled eggs finely.
In a bowl, mix the chopped eggs with oil and vinegar until moist.
Season the mixture with coarse sea salt and paprika.

Assemble and serve

Spread the mixture on thinly buttered slices of bread.
Cut into desired shapes and serve.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,513 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Vinegar + breadtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,672 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs: Form the main body of the filling, providing richness and a soft, spreadable texture.
Oil: Adds fat and moisture so the chopped eggs blend into a spreadable mixture.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the eggs and oil.
Butter: Adds fat and flavor to the bread and helps keep it from soaking up 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.