Name: Mayonaise of Cold Fish, Lobster, Crab, Etc
Ingredients: cold fish (like salmon); shredded lettuce leaves; mayonnaise sauce; hard-boiled eggs (sliced); sliced cucumber; sliced tomatoes; capers; lobster 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 ↓

Mayonaise of Cold Fish, Lobster, Crab, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare a mayonnaise sauce according to your preferred recipe.
Flake the cold fish and mix it with the shredded lettuce leaves.
Cover the mixture with the mayonnaise sauce.
Garnish with sliced hard-boiled eggs, cucumber, tomatoes, capers, or lobster 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.

Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together372 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cucumber + caperstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together303 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,405 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,655 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, salmon, lettuce, sauce, egg, cucumber, capers):

Chivefits better
Shallotfits better
Mustardfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, salmon, lettuce, sauce, egg, cucumber, capers. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.