Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: lobster meat, cut into ½ inch cubes; finely chopped celery, equal quantity to lobster meat; salt, to taste; pepper, to taste; vinegar, to taste; mayonnaise dressing, to moisten; lettuce leaves, for serving; finely chopped parsley, for garnish

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

lobster meat, cut into ½ inch cubes
finely chopped celery, equal quantity to lobster meat
salt, to taste
pepper, to taste
vinegar, to taste
mayonnaise dressing, to moisten
lettuce leaves, for serving
finely chopped parsley, for garnish

Directions

Make the salad

In a bowl, mix the lobster meat and chopped celery.
Season with salt, pepper, and vinegar.
Moisten the mixture with mayonnaise dressing.

Serve

Refill the lobster shells with the mixture.
Arrange the filled shells on a bed of lettuce leaves.
Sprinkle the top with finely chopped 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.

Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat: Forms the main body of the salad and provides its flavor.
Celery: Adds crisp texture that contrasts with the soft lobster meat.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and moisture so the mixture holds together and stays creamy.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, celery, pepper, vinegar, parsley):

Mustardfits better
Carrotfits better
Capsicumfits about as well
Lettucethe original

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

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.