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Egg Salad with Mayonnaise

A chilled salad of boiled potatoes, eggs, and mayonnaise flavored with lemon, mustard, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Egg Salad with Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad base

  1. Slice the potatoes and hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Dust with pepper and coarse sea salt, then add lemon juice and mix well.

Make the mayonnaise

  1. In a clean cold bowl, beat the egg yolks.

  2. Slowly add the salad oil drop by drop while stirring quickly with a wooden spoon.

  3. Once thick, add a little lemon juice to thin it, then alternate adding oil and lemon juice until all oil is used.

  4. Smooth the mustard with a little lemon juice and stir it in with additional pepper and salt to taste.

  5. If curdling occurs, beat another egg yolk and start with fresh oil, gradually adding the curdled mixture.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix part of the mayonnaise with the eggs and potatoes, and pour the rest over the salad; garnish with watercress.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil into the mayonnaise, giving it a thick, smooth body.
Salad oil
Forms the bulk of the mayonnaise, providing richness and a creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and thins the mayonnaise as it thickens.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, savoury flavour.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and mild richness to the salad.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly to the egg yolks. Oil must be added drop by drop while beating so it disperses into tiny droplets held by the yolk's lecithin. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, causing the mayonnaise to curdle.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, pepper, mustard. 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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