Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: 2½ pounds lobster; 1½ cups cucumber, cut into ¼ inch cubes; Mayonnaise Dressing; Lobster claws for garnish; Lobster coral for garnish

Why it works: Lobster and cucumber work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 128 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

2½ pounds lobster
1½ cups cucumber, cut into ¼ inch cubes
Mayonnaise Dressing
Lobster claws for garnish
Lobster coral for garnish

Directions

Remove the meat from the lobster and cut it into ½ inch cubes.
Add the cucumber cubes to the lobster meat.
Serve with mayonnaise dressing.
Garnish with lobster claws and lobster coral.

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 + cucumbertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together128 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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 tender, meaty texture of the salad.
Cucumber: Adds cool, crisp moisture and a light fresh contrast to the rich lobster.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and creaminess that binds the lobster and cucumber together.

“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.