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Egg Salad

A savory deviled egg dish with ham, olives, mushrooms, curry powder, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Egg Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs until hard-boiled, then cool and shell them.

  2. Cut each egg in half and remove the yolks.

Fill and assemble

  1. In a bowl, mix the yolks, ham, olives, mushrooms, salt, pepper, and curry powder.

  2. Fill the egg cavities with the mixture and reassemble the eggs.

  3. Insert cloves into the eggs.

Serve

  1. Place them on rings of green peppers.

  2. Serve garnished with mayonnaise.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Olive + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Olive + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the main body and structure, with the whites holding the filling.
Egg yolks
Become the creamy base of the filling, adding richness and a smooth texture.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy savoury flavour to the filling.
Olives
Add salty, briny flavour that contrasts with the rich yolks.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, giving the garnish a rich, creamy finish.

The step that matters

Fill the egg cavities with the mixture and reassemble the eggs. The filling should be smooth and evenly mixed so it sits firmly in each white. Chopped ingredients left in large pieces can make it crumble and fall out when the halves are reassembled.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

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

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Garlicabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, ham, olive, mushroom, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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