Name: Egg and Cheese Salad
Ingredients: 12 hard-boiled eggs; grated cheese; capers; finely chopped pickles; Mayonnaise sauce

Why it works: Capers and sauce work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Egg and Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Slice the hard-boiled eggs and layer them in a dish.
Grate a thick layer of cheese over the eggs.
Add another layer of eggs, alternating with cheese until all eggs are used.
Sprinkle capers and chopped pickles on top.
Pour mayonnaise sauce over the salad and cover with more grated cheese.

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.

Capers + saucetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together678 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Cheese + saucetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,987 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Egg + caperstop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,311 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Cheese + caperstop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together100 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Egg + cheesetop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,253 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs: Form the bulk of the salad and provide a soft, rich texture.
Grated cheese: Adds savoury flavour and richness between the egg layers.
Mayonnaise sauce: Adds moisture and fat, binding the layers and keeping the salad creamy.
Capers: Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness.
Pickles: Contribute tangy acidity and a crisp bite.

“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.