Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: 3 pounds boiled lobster; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; 1 tablespoon vinegar; lettuce leaves; Mayonnaise dressing; lobster coral for decoration; sliced hard boiled eggs; optional: cut up celery

Why it works: Lettuce and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the boiled lobster meat into pieces and place in a dish.
Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and vinegar; mix well.

Assemble and serve

Place the mixture in a salad bowl lined with lettuce leaves.
If desired, add cut up celery before adding the Mayonnaise.
Pour Mayonnaise dressing over the lobster mixture.
Decorate with lobster coral and sliced hard boiled eggs.

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.

Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,370 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled lobster: Forms the main body of the salad and provides its meaty texture.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the lobster.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and moisture, binding the salad and coating the lobster.
Sliced hard boiled eggs: Adds richness and a soft, creamy texture as a topping.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, pepper, vinegar, lettuce, egg):

Tarragonfits better
Capersfits better
Parsleyfits better
Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, pepper, vinegar, lettuce, egg. 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.