Name: Egg Salad
Ingredients: hard boiled eggs; chopped ham; pepper; coarse sea salt; prepared mustard; butter; heavy cream; lettuce leaves; French dressing or Mayonnaise

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Egg Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the shells from the hard boiled eggs and cut them in half.
Carefully remove the yolks and place them in a bowl.
Add chopped ham, pepper, coarse sea salt, prepared mustard, butter, and heavy cream to the yolks.
Mix well to create a dressing.
Fill the egg whites with the dressing.
Chill on ice until ready to serve.
Serve on lettuce leaves with French dressing or Mayonnaise.

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.

Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Ham + mustardtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together747 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

Swap the lettuce

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

Horseradishfits about as well
Asparagusfits about as well
Spinachfits about as well
Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, ham, pepper, mustard, butter, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.