Name: Crab Salad
Ingredients: 6 crabs; 1 bunch celery; ½ cup mayonnaise; salt; red pepper

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Crab Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

Boil crabs in salted water with red pepper for 20 minutes.
Once cool, remove the meat from the crabs.

Assemble and serve

Chop the celery and mix it with the crab meat and mayonnaise.
Serve as a delicious salad.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together922 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Crab + celerytop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together108 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Crabs: Provide the main protein and meat that forms the body of the salad.
Celery: Adds crisp texture and fresh crunch to the crab meat.
Mayonnaise: Adds fat and moisture, binding the crab meat and celery together.