Name: Egg Salad
Ingredients: hard boiled eggs, chopped; celery, chopped; onion, chopped; mayonnaise; coarse sea salt, to taste

Why it works: Celery and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Egg Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Combine equal parts of chopped hard boiled eggs, celery, and onion in a bowl.
Add mayonnaise and mix well.
Season with coarse sea salt to taste.

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.

Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Egg + celerytop 34% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,334 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Egg + oniontop 34% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together23,333 recipes

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

Egg and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,333 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 main body and protein-rich texture of the salad.
Celery: Adds crisp, crunchy texture that contrasts with the soft eggs.
Onion: Adds sharp, aromatic flavor that cuts through the richness of the mayonnaise.
Mayonnaise: Binds the chopped ingredients together and adds fat, moisture, and creaminess.