Name: Egg Salad
Ingredients: 1 hard cooked egg; 3 leaves lettuce; 1 tablespoon mayonnaise

Why it works: Egg and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,301 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Egg Salad

Ingredients

1 hard cooked egg
3 leaves lettuce
1 tablespoon mayonnaise

Directions

Prepare

Wash and chill the lettuce.
Arrange the lettuce on a plate.

Assemble and serve

Pour the mayonnaise over the lettuce.
Cut the egg into circular slices or press it through a strainer.
Serve the egg on the lettuce.

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.

Egg + lettucetop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,301 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard cooked egg: Provides the main protein and body of the salad, with a mild, rich flavour.
Lettuce: Adds crisp texture and a cool, fresh base that contrasts with the rich egg.
Mayonnaise: Adds fat and moisture, giving a creamy coating and smooth richness.

“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.