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Egg Salad

Baked egg salad with a cream and butter dressing, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Egg Salad

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine cream, butter, parsley, and flour; cook until thick.

Assemble

  1. Slice the hard boiled eggs.

  2. Layer the sliced eggs in a dish, sprinkling bread crumbs over each layer.

  3. Pour the cream dressing over the eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until brown.

  2. Garnish with parsley and serve hot.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Form the bulk of the dish and set firm and tender when heated.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the dressing, keeping the eggs from drying out.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps carry flavor through the dressing.
Flour
Thickens the cream dressing as its starch swells with heat.

The step that matters

Cook the cream dressing until thick. Flour only thickens fully when the mixture is cooked long enough for its starch to swell. If it is undercooked, the sauce stays thin and can taste raw and floury.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, butter, parsley, flour, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Chivebetter flavor fit
  3. Spinachbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, butter, parsley, flour, pepper, vinegar. 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.

More egg salad recipes

Dressing 26Anchovy 10Sandwich 8Sardine 6Cold 4Spinach 4 See all 143 →

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