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Salad

Egg Salad

A salad made from boiled eggs, butter, salt, pepper, and lettuce, served with dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,037 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Egg Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the yolks from the hard-boiled eggs and pass them through a colander.

  2. Chop the egg whites finely.

Mix and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the yolks, chopped whites, salt, pepper, and butter until well combined.

  2. Pack the mixture into tumblers.

  3. Cut into ¼ inch slices and serve on a lettuce leaf with your desired 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. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + lettucetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. 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-boiled eggs
Provide the main body, with yolks adding richness and a creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, giving the mixture a smooth, rich texture.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, butter. 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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