Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: 1 large lobster; salt; pepper; mayonnaise dressing; watercress; lobster coral; sliced cucumber; sliced onion rings; caviar

Why it works: Watercress and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 140 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the meat from the lobster shell and cut it into small pieces.
Season the lobster meat with salt and pepper, then mix well with mayonnaise dressing.
Garnish with tufts of watercress, fill the lobster shell with lobster coral, sliced cucumber, and onion rings filled with caviar.

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.

Watercress + cucumbertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together140 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,050 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Watercress + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together533 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together983 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, pepper, watercress, cucumber, caviar):

Lettucefits better
Chivefits better
Horseradishfits better
Onionthe original

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