Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: meat from 1 fresh boiled lobster, cut into 1-inch pieces; French dressing; mayonnaise; lettuce leaves; powdered coral from the lobster

Why it works: Meat and lobster work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 909 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

meat from 1 fresh boiled lobster, cut into 1-inch pieces
French dressing
mayonnaise
lettuce leaves
powdered coral from the lobster

Directions

Marinate the lobster meat in French dressing for 1 hour in a cold place.
Drain the lobster meat and mix it with a little mayonnaise.
Place the mixture on a flat dish surrounded by lettuce leaves, shaping it high in the center.
Cover the lobster salad thickly with mayonnaise.
Garnish with the heart of the lettuce and sprinkle with powdered coral.

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.

Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together909 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Lobster + lettucetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together411 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Meat + lettucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together579 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).