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Egg Salad

A salad of lettuce, hard‑boiled eggs, and a vinaigrette of vinegar, butter, mustard, cayenne, lemon, onion, and parsley.

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. Remove the leaves from the lettuce and cut it without chopping.

  2. Boil the eggs, then slice them while still hot.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. For the dressing, combine vinegar, butter, salt, dry mustard, cayenne, lemon juice, grated onion, and parsley.

  2. Mix the lettuce with the sliced eggs and add French dressing.

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

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

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the main body and protein of the salad, sliced while hot.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the rich butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dressing, softening the sharp acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that lifts the flavour of the dressing.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp base that the sliced eggs and dressing rest on.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, egg, vinegar, butter, mustard, pepper, lemon. 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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