Name: Crab Salad
Ingredients: crabs; coarse sea salt; finely chopped celery; tomatoes; mayonnaise

Why it works: Celery and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Crab Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Boil and pick the crabs.
Season the crab meat very highly.
Mix the picked crab meat with finely chopped celery.
Scoop out the tomatoes to create baskets.
Serve the crab mixture in the tomato baskets.
Cover the top with mayonnaise.

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.

Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Crab + celerytop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together108 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Crab + tomatotop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together100 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).