Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: ½ cup celery, cut in squares; 1 can lobster, drained; 4 hard boiled eggs; salad dressing No. 1 (boiled); red claws or coral part of lobster for garnish

Why it works: Celery and lobster work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 251 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

½ cup celery, cut in squares
1 can lobster, drained
4 hard boiled eggs
salad dressing No. 1 (boiled)
red claws or coral part of lobster for garnish

Directions

Cut celery into squares about the size of a bean.
Drain the canned lobster as dry as possible.
Chop the whites of the hard boiled eggs and add to the lobster and celery.
Pass the yolks of the hard boiled eggs through a ricer to garnish the top.
Mix everything with salad dressing before serving.

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 + lobstertop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together251 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Lobster + eggtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,484 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Celery + eggtop 34% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,334 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).