Name: Crab Salad En Coquille
Ingredients: crab meat; minced cold boiled cabbage; a pinch of mustard; cream salad dressing; lettuce leaves; chopped yolks of eggs; chopped whites of eggs

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Crab Salad En Coquille

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine crab meat, minced cold boiled cabbage, and a pinch of mustard.
Mix in cream salad dressing until well combined.
Fill crab shells with the mixture.
Serve on lettuce leaves and garnish with chopped yolks and whites of eggs alternately.

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.

Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together622 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together448 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).
Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together317 recipes

Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat, mustard, cream, lettuce, egg):

Horseradishfits better
Spinachfits better
Chivefits better
Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, mustard, cream, lettuce, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.