Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: 1 cold boiled lobster; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste; Lemon juice to taste; Mayonnaise dressing; Lettuce leaves

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 ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

Remove the meat from the lobster and cut it into 1-inch squares.
Season the lobster meat with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.
Mix the seasoned lobster with mayonnaise dressing.

Serve

Serve the mixture on lettuce leaves, either on a round dish or in a salad bowl.
Garnish with the lobster shell and additional lettuce leaves, hiding the lobster slightly with the greens.

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).
Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together411 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Lobster + peppertop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,247 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster: Provides the main sweet, tender meat that forms the body of the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and moisture, binding the lobster pieces into a creamy coating.
Lettuce leaves: Provides a crisp, cool base that contrasts with the rich lobster and mayonnaise.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the lobster meat.