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Salad

Egg Salad

A salad made with boiled eggs, lettuce, French dressing, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard 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

Prepare

  1. Boil the eggs and slice them while hot.

  2. Cut the lettuce without chopping it.

Dress and serve

  1. Mix the lettuce with the French dressing.

  2. In a bowl, combine sugar, salt, dry mustard, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, grated onion, and parsley.

  3. Add the sliced eggs to the mixture and gently combine.

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. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the main protein body of the salad, with rich flavor and texture.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp, leafy base that holds the dressing and egg.
French dressing
Adds moisture and tangy, sweet-savory flavor to the lettuce.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the egg.
Onion
Adds sharp aroma and pungent flavor to the dressing.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, lettuce, sugar, mustard, pepper, lemon, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lettuce, sugar, mustard, pepper, lemon, parsley. 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.

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