Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: lobster meat; French dressing; celery; cream or oil dressing; lobster coral; curled celery

Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Remove lobster meat from shell and cut into ½ inch cubes.
Marinate lobster with French dressing.
Add an equal quantity of celery cut into small pieces, soaked in cold water for 1 hour, then drained and dried.
Moisten with cream or oil dressing.
Arrange on a salad dish, pile slightly in the center, and cover with dressing.
Sprinkle with lobster coral forced through a fine sieve.
Garnish with a border of curled celery.

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 + creamtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,050 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together909 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,863 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Meat + celerytop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,880 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Meat + creamtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,248 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).