Name: Salade De Homard En Aspic
Ingredients: lobster; aspic jelly; tarragon; lettuce

Why it works: Tarragon and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salade De Homard En Aspic

Ingredients

lobster
aspic jelly
tarragon
lettuce

Directions

Cut the lobster into convenient pieces.
Melt the aspic jelly and pour a layer ¼ inch thick into a border mold.
When the jelly begins to set, arrange the lobster pieces and some tarragon leaves in the mold.
Fill the mold with more jelly and place it on ice to set.
Dress the remaining lobster with lettuce.

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.

Tarragon + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together425 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lobster + tarragontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together109 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Lobster + lettucetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together411 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).