Why it works: Egg and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 28% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,210 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Salad Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Cook and cool the eggs
Boil the eggs for 10 minutes.
Place the eggs in a basin of cold water for 30 minutes until completely cool.
Make the sauce
Sieve the yolks through a wooden spoon.
Mix the sieved yolks with water and prepared mustard.
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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Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,210 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- The yolks form the body and richness of the sauce once mashed smooth.
- Prepared mustard
- Mustard adds sharp flavour and helps the yolks hold together smoothly.
The step that matters
Cooling the eggs completely. Residual heat keeps cooking the yolks after boiling, which can make them dry and grey-ringed. Chilling them fully in cold water stops the cooking, and cool yolks crumble and sieve more smoothly.
“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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