Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: 2 parts lobster meat, cooked and diced; 1 part diced celery; Salt, to taste; Pepper, to taste; Tarragon vinegar, to taste; Mayonnaise, to cover; Hard boiled eggs, sliced for garnish

Why it works: Celery and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 456 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Pick the lobster meat apart and combine it with the diced celery in a bowl.
Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and tarragon vinegar.
Cover the salad with mayonnaise.
Garnish with slices of hard boiled egg.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together456 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,399 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,547 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat: Provides the main protein and sweet, delicate flavour of the salad.
Celery: Adds crisp texture that contrasts with the soft lobster meat.
Mayonnaise: Adds fat and moisture, binding the salad and coating the lobster and celery.
Tarragon vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the rich mayonnaise and lobster.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, pepper, tarragon, vinegar, egg):

Parsleyfits better
Capersfits about as well
Thymefits about as well
Celerythe original

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

“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.