Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: cooked lobster, picked into pieces; celery, chopped; thick mayonnaise; lettuce leaves; additional mayonnaise for serving

Why it works: Celery and lettuce 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

Pick the lobster into pieces, similar to how you would with chicken.
Mix the lobster with chopped celery and season to taste.
Combine the mixture with thick mayonnaise.
Serve the salad on lettuce leaves with additional mayonnaise poured over the top.
Garnish as you would for chicken salad.

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 + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Lobster + lettucetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together411 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Lobster + celerytop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together251 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).