Name: Egg Salad
Ingredients: 12 hard boiled eggs; 4 tablespoons olive oil; 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce; 4 tablespoons vinegar; 10 drops Tabasco sauce; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 pinch mustard; 1 head 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 ↓

Egg Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Slice the hard-boiled eggs.
Mix the sliced eggs with the lettuce.

Dress and serve

In a bowl, combine vinegar, olive oil, mustard, Tabasco sauce, and salt to make the dressing.
Pour the dressing over the egg and lettuce mixture.

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).
Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,950 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Olive + vinegartop 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

Hard-boiled eggs: Provide the main body and protein of the salad, with firm, sliceable texture.
Olive oil: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the dressing.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the rich eggs and oil.
Lettuce: Adds crisp texture and fresh moisture to the salad.

Swap the lettuce

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

Horseradishfits better
Shallotfits about as well
Lettucethe original
Cucumberfits about as well

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