Name: Creustade of Lobster
Ingredients: 1 loaf stale bread; butter; cooked lobster meat; boiled tomatoes, thinly sliced; white sauce, highly seasoned; fine bread crumbs; stuffed olives, halved; parsley

Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Creustade of Lobster

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cut off the top of the loaf of stale bread and scoop out the interior, leaving a half wall.
Spread butter on the inside and bake until crisp.
Layer cooked lobster meat over the bottom, followed by a layer of boiled tomatoes.
Add a highly seasoned white sauce between each layer.
Top with fine bread crumbs, dot with butter, and bake for 15 minutes at 400°F (200°C).
Garnish with halved stuffed olives, lobster, clams, and parsley.

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.

Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,539 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,649 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,398 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, lobster, meat, tomato, sauce, olive):

Capersfits better
Garlicfits about as well
Thymefits about as well
Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, lobster, meat, tomato, sauce, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.