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Salad

Water Lily Salad

A salad of hard‑boiled eggs mixed with mayonnaise or butter, seasoned, and served on heart lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,037 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Water Lily Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Remove shells from the desired number of hard-boiled eggs and cut them in half crosswise.

  2. Use a fine knife to cut in a way that leaves sharp points on the edges.

Make the filling

  1. Remove the yolks, mash them, and season with melted butter, coarse sea salt, and black pepper, or moisten with mayonnaise.

  2. Refill the egg whites with the mixture and arrange them on heart lettuce.

  3. Serve with additional mayonnaise if desired.

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. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + lettucetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. 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

Eggs
Provide the main body of the salad, with yolks mashed into a rich filling.
Mayonnaise
Adds moisture and fat, giving the mashed yolk filling a creamy texture.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the mashed yolks taste smooth and round.

The step that matters

Cutting the egg whites. A fine knife with a sharp, cleanly cut edge keeps the whites intact and neat. Tearing or crushing them makes the halves hard to refill and lets filling spill out.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, pepper. 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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