Name: A Lobster Cake
Ingredients: 6 lobsters; ½ pound butter; 2 dozen anchovies, cleaned and bones removed; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; Cayenne pepper to taste; 12 egg yolks; fat bacon for greasing the mold

Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

A Lobster Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the lobsters into small pieces and include all the spawn.
In a mortar, combine the lobsters, butter, and anchovies; pound until fine.
Season the mixture with pepper, coarse sea salt, and Cayenne pepper.
Add the egg yolks and mix well with the lobster mixture.
Grease a mold with fat bacon and fill it with the lobster mixture.
Finish cooking the lobster cake as you would a hare cake.

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.

Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,609 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lobster + peppertop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,247 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,484 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).