Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: 1 can of lobster; 1-3 part shredded lettuce or celery; mayonnaise; lettuce leaves

Why it works: Lobster and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 411 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

1 can of lobster
1-3 part shredded lettuce or celery
mayonnaise
lettuce leaves

Directions

Prepare

Remove all bits of shell from the lobster and shred it.

Make the salad

Add shredded lettuce or celery and mix with mayonnaise.
You can omit the lettuce and celery if preferred.

Serve

Serve on lettuce leaves with a spoonful of dressing on top.

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.

Lobster + lettucetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together411 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster: Provides the main protein and flavour of the salad.
Mayonnaise: Adds moisture and richness, binding the salad together with a creamy texture.
Shredded lettuce or celery: Adds crisp texture and freshness that contrasts with the soft lobster.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.