Name: Lobster Cutlets
Ingredients: 1 pint chopped lobster meat; ½ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; ½ teaspoon mustard; 1 cup cream sauce

Why it works: Lobster and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Lobster Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the salt, mustard, and cayenne together.
Add the mixture to the chopped lobster meat.
Combine well with the cream sauce.

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.

Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,050 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Mustard + saucetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,120 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, pepper, cream, sauce):

Mustardthe original
Capsicumfits about as well
Horseradishfits about as well
Spinachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, pepper, cream, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.