Name: Egg Sandwich
Ingredients: 4 hard boiled eggs, chopped very fine; pepper, to taste; celery salt, to taste; salad dressing, to moisten

Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Egg Sandwich

Ingredients

4 hard boiled eggs, chopped very fine
pepper, to taste
celery salt, to taste
salad dressing, to moisten

Directions

Chop the hard boiled eggs very fine.
Season the eggs with pepper and celery salt.
Moisten the mixture with salad 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.

Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together50,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + celerytop 34% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,334 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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: Form the main body of the filling, giving it bulk and a soft, tender texture.
Salad dressing: Adds moisture and creaminess so the chopped egg holds together in the filling.