Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: 1 can lobster; 1⅓ cups cabbage, finely chopped; 4 hard boiled eggs; mustard to taste; vinegar to taste

Why it works: Cabbage and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,645 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Remove the soft parts from the lobster and mash them.
Chop the remaining lobster and cabbage finely, using slightly more than one-third cabbage.
Mash the yolks of the hard boiled eggs and chop the whites.

Combine

Combine all ingredients and add mustard and vinegar to taste.

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.

Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lobster + mustardtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together394 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Lobster + vinegartop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together692 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster: Provides the main meat and flavor of the salad.
Cabbage: Adds crisp texture and bulk to the salad.
Hard boiled eggs: Add richness from the yolks and body from the chopped whites.
Mustard: Adds sharpness and a pungent aroma that cuts through the richness.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the seafood and eggs.