Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: 1 lobster, cut into large thin pieces; 6 anchovy fillets; 1 cucumber, sliced; 2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped; Salad greens

Why it works: Lobster and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ingredients

Cut the lobster into large, thin pieces.
Wash the anchovies and remove the meat from the bones, then cut into four fillets.
Combine the anchovy fillets with chopped sweet herbs and the chopped yolks and whites of the hard-boiled eggs.

Assemble the salad

Arrange the lobster pieces on a bed of salad greens, and top with the anchovy mixture, cucumber slices, and chopped 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.

Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together470 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,330 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Anchovy + cucumbertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together134 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Lobster + cucumbertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together128 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Cucumber + eggtop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,346 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster: Forms the main body of the salad and provides its sweet, delicate meat.
Anchovy fillets: Adds salty, savoury depth that seasons the whole salad.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add richness and a soft, creamy texture from the yolks.
Cucumber: Adds cool, crisp moisture that contrasts with the richer ingredients.