Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: 1 pint lobster meat, diced; French dressing; mayonnaise dressing; lettuce leaves; parsley; lobster claws; capers; pounded coral

Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Season the lobster meat with French dressing and keep it on ice until ready to serve.
Mix the lobster with a little mayonnaise dressing.

Assemble and garnish

Arrange a large spoonful of the mixture on each lettuce leaf.
Top each serving with a spoonful of mayonnaise dressing.
Garnish with parsley and lobster claws around the edges, and sprinkle capers and pounded coral over the 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.

Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together372 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together909 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Lobster + caperstop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together102 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat: Forms the main body of the salad and provides its flavour and texture.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds moisture and richness, binding the lobster into a creamy mixture.
French dressing: Seasons the lobster meat before it is mixed with the richer dressing.
Lettuce leaves: Provide a crisp, cool base that holds the salad.