Name: Plovers' Egg Salad
Ingredients: hard-boiled plovers' eggs; pale aspic jelly; truffle; chervil leaves

Why it works: Egg and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,604 recipes. Both carry 2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Plovers' Egg Salad

Ingredients

hard-boiled plovers' eggs
pale aspic jelly
truffle
chervil leaves

Directions

Line a plain charlotte mould with pale aspic jelly.
Slice the hard-boiled plovers' eggs.
Arrange the largest center pieces in a ring at the bottom, overlapping, with a star-shaped slice of truffle in the center.
Place a row of chervil leaves in between.
Continue layering with rows of egg slices and chervil leaves until within an inch of the edge of the mould, overlapping each row in the opposite direction.

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.

Egg + truffletop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,604 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).
Egg + cherviltop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together620 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Truffle + cherviltop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).