Egg salad is part of a tradition of salads involving a high-protein and low-carbohydrate food mixed with seasonings in the form of spices, herbs, and other foods, and bound with mayonnaise. Its siblings include tuna salad, chicken salad, ham salad, lobster salad, and crab salad.
Egg salad is often used as a sandwich filling, typically made of chopped hard-boiled eggs, mayonnaise, mustard, minced celery, onion, salt, pepper and paprika. It is also often used as a topping on green salads.
A closely related sandwich filler is egg mayonnaise, where chopped hard-boiled egg is mixed with mayonnaise only.
Egg salad can be made creatively with any number of other cold foods added. Onions, lettuce, pickles, pickle relish, capers, bacon, pepper, cheese, celery and cucumber are common ingredients.
In Britain and Ireland, egg salad refers to green or mixed vegetable salad with egg on the side as the protein part of the meal, but not necessarily in mayonnaise.
Famous quotes containing the words egg and/or salad:
“Better half an egg than an empty eggshell.”
—Estonian. Trans. by Ilse Lehiste (1993)
“A woman should never be seen eating or drinking, unless it be lobster salad and Champagne, the only true feminine & becoming viands.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)