Name: Lobster Salad a L'allemande
Ingredients: lobster; lettuce leaves; 1 tablespoon finely minced parsley; 4 hard-boiled egg yolks; French dressing

Why it works: Lettuce and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,483 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Lobster Salad a L'allemande

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster as in the previous recipe.
Arrange the lobster pieces on lettuce leaves.
Sprinkle with minced parsley and press the egg yolks through a sieve over the lobster.
Serve with French dressing.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lobster + lettucetop 17% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together411 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together18,765 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Lobster + parsleytop 24% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together890 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Lobster + eggtop 28% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together1,484 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, parsley, egg):

Shallotbetter flavor fit
Chiveabout as good a flavor fit
Spinachabout as good a flavor fit
Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, parsley, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).