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Egg Salad

A chilled egg salad with mustard, curry, vinegar, olive oil, and cream, served in egg whites on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Egg Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, mix the dry mustard, salt, white pepper, curry powder, onion juice, vinegar, beaten egg, olive oil, and cream.

  2. Beat the mixture well and set the bowl over steam, stirring constantly until thick and creamy.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut the hard-boiled eggs in half lengthwise and remove the yolks.

  2. Remove from heat and gradually stir in the mashed egg yolks.

  3. Chill the mixture in the refrigerator until very cold.

  4. To serve, fill the egg whites with the mixture and place each half on a few leaves of tender lettuce, garnishing with mayonnaise 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. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Beaten egg
Thickens the dressing as it cooks over steam, giving it a creamy body.
Olive oil
Adds fat that makes the dressing smooth and rich.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the dressing's texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the dressing.
Hard-boiled eggs
Form the base of the salad, with yolks mashed into the dressing.

The step that matters

Stirring the dressing over steam. Beaten egg thickens only gently with constant stirring over steam. Too much heat or no stirring can scramble the egg, leaving lumps instead of a smooth, creamy dressing.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mustard, onion, vinegar, olive, cream):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, onion, vinegar, olive, cream. 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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