Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: 1 or 2 large lobsters, cooked; Pepper, to taste; Coarse sea salt, to taste; Vinegar, to taste; Shredded lettuce hearts; Cucumber slices (optional); Garnish (e.g., aspic jelly, sliced beetroot, hard-boiled eggs, nasturtium flowers, scraped radishes); Mayonnaise sauce (see below)

Why it works: Lettuce and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

1 or 2 large lobsters, cooked
Pepper, to taste
Coarse sea salt, to taste
Vinegar, to taste
Shredded lettuce hearts
Cucumber slices (optional)
Garnish (e.g., aspic jelly, sliced beetroot, hard-boiled eggs, nasturtium flowers, scraped radishes)
Mayonnaise sauce (see below)

Directions

Ensure the lobster is sweet and fresh, and the lettuce is crisp and dry.
Remove the meat from the lobsters and cut it into neat pieces.
Season the lobster pieces with pepper, salt, and vinegar.
Place a bed of shredded lettuce at the bottom of a dish.
Layer the lobster on top, adding cucumber slices if desired.
Cover with more lettuce and repeat the layers until all ingredients are used.
Decorate the border with your choice of garnish.
Pour the mayonnaise sauce over the salad just before serving.
Sprinkle powdered lobster coral 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.

Lettuce + beetroottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together678 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cucumber + radishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together212 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Cucumber + beetroottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together345 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beetroot + radishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together52 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the cucumber

The recipe marks cucumber as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, pepper, vinegar, lettuce, beetroot, egg, radish):

Mustardfits about as well
Cucumberthe original
Horseradishfits about as well
Spinachfits about as well

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