Name: Fish Salad with Mayonnaise
Ingredients: cooked lobster, sliced; cooked turbot or large soles, sliced; mayonnaise sauce; cayenne pepper; anchovy essence or anchovy butter; lobster coral; fresh salad greens

Why it works: Turbot and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 248 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fish Salad with Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster and fish by slicing them obliquely to increase their size.
Arrange the lobster and fish slices alternately on a serving dish.
Make the mayonnaise sauce by mixing it with cayenne, anchovy essence, and lobster coral to taste.
Form a high border of the fish and lobster around the dish.
Fill the center with fresh salad greens and dress with the mayonnaise just before serving.

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.

Turbot + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together248 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Turbot + anchovytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together110 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together470 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Lobster + turbottop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together163 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).