Name: Salad of Lobster
Ingredients: boiled hen lobsters; parsley, chopped fine; lobster spawn, chopped; lemon, sliced; oil; vinegar; mustard; cayenne pepper; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Salad of Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the shells from the boiled lobsters and preserve the meat as white as possible.
Cut the tails in half and place them in the center of a dish with the red side up, adding the whole claw meat.
Surround the lobster with a row of finely chopped parsley and a row of chopped spawn.
Mix a little of each and sprinkle over the top of the lobster.
Arrange lemon slices around the rim of the dish.
In a sauceboat, combine oil, vinegar, mustard, cayenne pepper, and coarse sea salt 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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,588 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, parsley, lemon, vinegar, pepper):

Shallotfits about as well
Capsicumfits about as well
Mustardthe original
Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, parsley, lemon, vinegar, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.