Name: Crab Salad
Ingredients: crabs; salt; pepper; oil; vinegar; chives; chervil; lobster or crab coral

Why it works: Chive and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 370 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Crab Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the crabs as explained in bisque of crabs.
Pick the meat from the shells and chill it on ice.
Season the crab meat with salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar.
Sprinkle finely cut chives, chervil, and chopped lobster or crab coral over the salad.

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.

Chive + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together370 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Crab + lobstertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together196 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Pepper + cherviltop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together867 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pepper + chivetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,885 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Chervil + lobstertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together52 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

Swap the chive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, pepper, vinegar, chervil, lobster):

Lettucefits better
Mustardfits about as well
Chivethe original
Shallotfits about as well

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