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Deviled Egg Sandwiches

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Mustard and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,816 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Deviled Egg Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the yolks from the hard-boiled eggs and mash them until they are a fine powder.

  2. Mix the yolks with salad oil, French mustard, cayenne or paprika, coarse sea salt, and lemon juice to form a smooth cream.

  3. Spread the mixture between thin slices of buttered brown bread.

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. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Mustard + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Lemon + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, lemon, bread):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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