Name: Fried Lobster
Ingredients: lobster meat from tail and claws; salt; pepper; lemon juice

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fried Lobster

Ingredients

lobster meat from tail and claws
salt
pepper
lemon juice

Directions

Remove the lobster meat from the tail and claws.
Season the lobster meat with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.
Fry the lobster meat in hot oil until golden brown.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together909 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,777 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Lobster + peppertop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,247 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,817 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).