Name: Mock-Crab Thumb-bits
Ingredients: 1 hard-boiled egg yolk; 1 tablespoon salad oil; salt to taste; caster sugar to taste; made mustard to taste; a few drops onion vinegar; 1 tablespoon finely chopped cold fowl; 1 tablespoon grated cheese

Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mock-Crab Thumb-bits

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

Rub the yolk of a hard-boiled egg into a smooth paste with salad oil.
Add salt, caster sugar, made mustard, and onion vinegar one at a time to taste.
Incorporate finely chopped cold fowl and mix well.
Work in grated cheese.

Serve

Spread the paste on bread and serve.

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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + cheesetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,805 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Vinegar + cheesetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together922 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).
Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,226 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolk: Its rich, crumbly texture forms the smooth base that binds the paste.
Salad oil: Blends with the yolk to make it smooth and spreadable, adding richness.
Cold fowl: Provides the chopped meat that gives the paste its body and substance.
Grated cheese: Adds savoury flavour and some body to the paste.

Swap the onion

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

Horseradishfits better
Cucumberfits better
Lettucefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, mustard, vinegar, cheese. 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.