Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: 1 pound fresh or canned lobster; 2 small onions; ¼ lemon (with rind); 2 bunches celery or equivalent amount of crisp cabbage; Lettuce leaves for serving; Egg whites for garnish

Why it works: Lemon and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

1 pound fresh or canned lobster
2 small onions
¼ lemon (with rind)
2 bunches celery or equivalent amount of crisp cabbage
Lettuce leaves for serving
Egg whites for garnish

Directions

Chop the lobster, onions, lemon, and celery or cabbage finely.
Thoroughly mix the chopped ingredients with the dressing.
Serve the mixture on lettuce leaves in individual dishes.
Garnish with finely chopped egg whites.

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.

Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,467 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,562 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).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, lemon, celery, lettuce, egg):

Mustardfits better
Spinachfits better
Beetrootfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, lemon, celery, lettuce, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.