Egg salad is a dish made primarily of chopped

hard-boiled Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction (especially detective fiction and noir fiction). The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence ...

scrambled eggs Scrambled eggs is a dish made from eggs (usually chicken eggs) stirred, whipped or beaten together while being gently heated, typically with salt, butter, oil and sometimes other ingredients. Preparation Only eggs are necessary to make scrambled ...

mustard Mustard may refer to: Food and plants * Mustard (condiment), a paste or sauce made from mustard seeds used as a condiment * Mustard plant, one of several plants, having seeds that are used for the condiment ** Mustard seed, seeds of the mustard p ...

, and

mayonnaise Mayonnaise (; ), colloquially referred to as "mayo" , is a thick, cold, and creamy sauce or dressing commonly used on sandwiches, hamburgers, composed salads, and French fries. It also forms the base for various other sauces, such as tartar ...

, often including other ingredients such as

celery Celery (''Apium graveolens'') is a marshland plant in the family Apiaceae that has been cultivated as a vegetable since antiquity. Celery has a long fibrous stalk tapering into leaves. Depending on location and cultivar, either its stalks, lea ...

. It is made mixed with seasonings in the form of

herb In general use, herbs are a widely distributed and widespread group of plants, excluding vegetables and other plants consumed for macronutrients, with savory or aromatic properties that are used for flavoring and garnishing food, for medicinal ...

spices A spice is a seed, fruit, root, Bark (botany), bark, or other plant substance primarily used for flavoring or coloring food. Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are the leaves, flowers, or stems of plants used for flavoring or as a garni ...

and other ingredients, bound with mayonnaise. It is similar to

chicken salad Chicken salad is any salad with chicken as a main ingredient. Other common ingredients may include mayonnaise, hard-boiled egg, celery, onion, pepper, pickles (or pickle relish) and a variety of mustards. Description In Canada and the United S ...

ham salad Ham salad is a traditional Anglo-American salad. Ham salad resembles chicken salad, egg salad, and tuna salad (as well as starch-based salads like potato salad, macaroni salad, and pea salad): the primary ingredient, ham, is mixed with smaller amo ...

macaroni salad Macaroni salad is a type of pasta salad, served cold made with cooked elbow macaroni and usually prepared with mayonnaise. Much like potato salad or coleslaw in its use, it is often served as a side dish to barbecue, fried chicken, or other picni ...

tuna salad Tuna salad starts with a blend of two main ingredients: tuna and mayonnaise. The tuna used is usually pre-cooked, canned, and packaged in water or oil. Pickles, celery, relish, and onion are foremost among the ingredients that are often added. Whe ...

, lobster salad, and crab salad. A typical egg salad is made of chopped

hard-boiled egg Boiled eggs are eggs, typically from a chicken, cooked with their shells unbroken, usually by immersion in boiling water. Hard-boiled eggs are cooked so that the egg white and egg yolk both solidify, while soft-boiled eggs may leave the yolk, ...

, minced

and

onion An onion (''Allium cepa'' L., from Latin ''cepa'' meaning "onion"), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus ''Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the onion ...

salt Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quantitie ...

black pepper Black pepper (''Piper nigrum'') is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit, known as a peppercorn, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. The fruit is a drupe (stonefruit) which is about in diame ...

and paprika. A common use is as a filling for

egg sandwiches An egg sandwich is a sandwich with some kind of cooked egg filling. Fried eggs, scrambled eggs, omeltte, sliced boiled eggs and egg salad (a mix of chopped cooked egg and mustard and mayonnaise) are popular options. In the fifth case, it may be c ...

. It is also often used as
Topping
for a green salad.

History

One of the earliest known printed recipes for egg salad

sandwich A sandwich is a food typically consisting of vegetables, sliced cheese or meat, placed on or between slices of bread, or more generally any dish wherein bread serves as a container or wrapper for another food type. The sandwich began as a po ...

es was published in the 1896 edition of ''

The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book The ''Boston Cooking-School Cook Book'' (1896) by Fannie Farmer is a 19th-century general reference cookbook which is still available both in reprint and in updated form. It was particularly notable for a more rigorous approach to recipe writing ...

'' written by

Fannie Farmer Fannie Merritt Farmer (23 March 1857 – 16 January 1915) was an American culinary expert whose ''Boston Cooking-School Cook Book'' became a widely used culinary text. Education Fannie Farmer was born on 23 March 1857 in Boston, Massachusetts, ...

Variations

Egg salad can be made creatively with any number of other cold foods added.

Bacon Bacon is a type of salt-cured pork made from various cuts, typically the belly or less fatty parts of the back. It is eaten as a side dish (particularly in breakfasts), used as a central ingredient (e.g., the bacon, lettuce, and tomato sand ...

bell pepper The bell pepper (also known as paprika, sweet pepper, pepper, or capsicum ) is the fruit of plants in the Grossum Group of the species ''Capsicum annuum''. Cultivars of the plant produce fruits in different colors, including red, yellow, orange ...

, capers,

cheese Cheese is a dairy product produced in wide ranges of flavors, textures, and forms by coagulation of the milk protein casein. It comprises proteins and fat from milk, usually the milk of cows, buffalo, goats, or sheep. During production, ...

cucumber Cucumber (''Cucumis sativus'') is a widely-cultivated Vine#Horticultural climbing plants, creeping vine plant in the Cucurbitaceae family that bears usually cylindrical Fruit, fruits, which are used as culinary vegetables.

lettuce Lettuce (''Lactuca sativa'') is an annual plant of the family Asteraceae. It is most often grown as a leaf vegetable, but sometimes for its stem and seeds. Lettuce is most often used for salads, although it is also seen in other kinds of food, ...

, pickle relish,

pickles Pickles may refer to: Dogs * Pickles (dog) (died 1967), a dog that found the stolen World Cup trophy in 1966 * Pickles (pickleball), a dog often cited as the name origin for the sport of pickleball * Mr. Pickles, the titular demonic dog in ...

, and

ketchup Ketchup or catsup is a table condiment with a sweet and tangy flavor. The unmodified term ("ketchup") now typically refers to tomato ketchup, although early recipes used egg whites, mushrooms, oysters, grapes, mussels, or walnuts, among o ...

are common additional ingredients. A closely related sandwich filler is egg mayonnaise, wherein chopped hard-boiled egg is mixed with mayonnaise only. A popular variant in

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

and the former Soviet states is salad Olivier. In

Jewish cuisine Jewish cuisine refers to the worldwide cooking traditions of the Jewish people. During its evolution over the course of many centuries, it has been shaped by Jewish dietary laws (''kashrut''), Jewish festivals and holidays, and traditions cen ...

it is made with

schmaltz Schmaltz (also spelled schmalz or shmalz) is rendered (clarified) chicken or goose fat. It is an integral part of traditional Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine, where it has been used for centuries in a wide array of dishes, such as chicken soup, lat ...

, onions and sometimes

gribenes In Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine, gribenes or grieven ( yi, גריבענעס, , "cracklings"; he, גלדי שומן) are crisp chicken or goose skin cracklings with fried onions. As with other cracklings, gribenes are a byproduct of rendering animal f ...

. It can be served with challah as part of the first course of Shabbos dinner, or with

matzo Matzah or matzo ( he, מַצָּה, translit=maṣṣā'','' pl. matzot or Ashk. matzos) is an unleavened flatbread that is part of Jewish cuisine and forms an integral element of the Passover festival, during which '' chametz'' (leaven and ...

. Until the 1980s this dish was also called "Jewish eggs".

References

{{Salads Salads Egg dishes British cuisine British salads Irish cuisine European cuisine Shabbat food

History

Variations

See also

References