Name: Eggs with Caviare
Ingredients: hard-boiled eggs; caviare; lemon juice; crisp lettuce leaves; French dressing

Why it works: Lemon and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,559 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Eggs with Caviare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

Cut a slice from one end of the hard-boiled eggs and remove the yolks.
Pass the yolks through a ricer.

Fill and serve

Fill the egg whites with caviar seasoned with a little lemon juice.
Arrange the filled eggs on plates with crisp lettuce leaves moistened with French dressing.
Sprinkle the riced yolks on top of the eggs.

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.

Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together44,316 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Egg + lettucetop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,301 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs: Provide the white shells that hold the filling and the yolks for garnish.
Caviare: Adds salty, briny flavour and a luxurious texture as the main filling.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the salty flavour of the caviar.
Crisp lettuce leaves: Provide a cool, crisp, fresh base that contrasts with the rich eggs.