Name: Eggs Stuffed with Chicken
Ingredients: cold minced chicken; thick tomato purée; 1 raw egg (if serving hot); a few bread crumbs (if serving hot); Tomato Sauce (if serving hot); mayonnaise (if serving cold); lettuce hearts (if serving cold)

Why it works: Tomato and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,655 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Eggs Stuffed with Chicken

Ingredients

cold minced chicken
thick tomato purée
1 raw egg (if serving hot)
a few bread crumbs (if serving hot)
Tomato Sauce (if serving hot)
mayonnaise (if serving cold)
lettuce hearts (if serving cold)

Directions

Prepare the eggs as you would for stuffed anchovies, using cold minced chicken instead.
Mix the chicken with thick tomato purée to form a paste.
If serving hot, add a raw egg and a few bread crumbs to the paste before heating.
Serve with Tomato Sauce if hot, or with mayonnaise and quartered lettuce hearts if cold.

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.

Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,031 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,013 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,258 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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 (chicken, tomato, egg, bread, sauce):

Capsicumfits better
Asparagusfits better
Potatofits better
Lettucethe original

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