Name: Stuffed Egg
Ingredients: 1 hard cooked egg; 1 tablespoon chopped chicken; ¼ teaspoon salt; 6 drops vinegar; ½ teaspoon mustard; Cayenne to taste; 1 teaspoon olive oil or butter; 2 or 3 leaves of lettuce

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce 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 ↓

Stuffed Egg

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Remove the shell from the egg and cut it in half.
Take out the yolk, leaving the white whole.

Make and fill

Mash the yolk and mix in the chicken, salt, vinegar, mustard, cayenne, and olive oil or butter.
Fill the egg white with the yolk mixture.

Serve

Serve on a bed of 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.

Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,950 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,888 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

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 white case that holds the filling and the yolk that becomes the filling.
Chopped chicken: Adds savoury bulk and substance to the mashed yolk filling.
Olive oil or butter: Adds fat that makes the mashed yolk filling smooth and moist.
Mustard: Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts the richness of the yolk.

Swap the lettuce

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

Capsicumfits about as well
Lettucethe original
Cucumberfits about as well
Broccolifits about as well

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