Skip to main content
Main

Egg Salad

A salad of hard‑boiled eggs mixed with yolk, butter, celery extract, dressing, salt, pepper, vinegar, served in egg whites on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Egg Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Peel the hard-boiled eggs carefully.

  2. Cut a small piece off the end of the egg whites so they can stand upright.

  3. Cut the eggs in half and remove the yolks.

Make the filling

  1. Press the yolks through a potato masher until smooth.

  2. Mix the yolks with melted butter, celery extract, salad dressing, salt, pepper, and vinegar.

Fill and serve

  1. Refill the egg whites with the yolk mixture.

  2. Serve the filled eggs on lettuce leaves.

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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the white shells that hold the filling and the yolks that form the creamy base.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the yolk mixture.
Salad dressing
Adds moisture, tang, and flavor that bind the yolks into a spreadable filling.

The step that matters

Press the yolks through a potato masher until smooth. Yolks that are left lumpy stay grainy and dry, while thoroughly mashed yolks blend with the butter and dressing into an even, creamy filling.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

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

More egg salad recipes

Dressing 26Anchovy 10Sandwich 8Sardine 6Cold 4Spinach 4 See all 143 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes