Why it works: Lettuce and radish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 58 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓
Egg Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the eggs
Hard boil the eggs and cut them in half without breaking the whites.
Cut the tops of the egg halves into small points and remove the yolks.
Rub the yolks through a sieve and moisten with boiled dressing.
Refill the egg whites with the yolk mixture and arrange on lettuce leaves.
Prepare the radishes
To make tulip-shaped radishes, select smooth, firm, red radishes and remove the leaves, leaving 1 inch of stem.
Make seven incisions through the skin of the radishes, extending nearly to the stem ends.
Pass a knife under the sections of skin and cut as far as the incisions extend.
Soak the radishes in cold water for 1 hour before serving.
Garnish and serve
Garnish with thin slices of radish overlapping each other and whole radishes cut to resemble tulips.
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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Lettuce + radishtop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together58 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Egg + lettucetop 30% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,301 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Egg + radishtop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together165 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Provide the whites that hold the filling and the rich yolk that forms the salad's body.
- Boiled dressing
- Moistens the sieved yolks so the filling becomes smooth and spreadable.
- Radishes
- Add a crisp texture and a sharp, peppery bite that contrasts with the rich filling.
The step that matters
Rub the yolks through a sieve. Pushing the cooked yolks through a sieve breaks them into fine particles, giving a smooth, even filling. Coarse lumps would make the filling grainy and uneven in texture.
Swap the radish
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, lettuce):
- Beetrootfits better
- Spinachfits better
- Chivefits better
- Radishthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lettuce. 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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