Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: 1 hen lobster; 2 hard-boiled eggs; 1 boiled beetroot; Salad dressing (see below); Any small salad in season (e.g., endive, lettuce); Cucumber

Why it works: Endive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Wash and dry the salad greens.
Place the salad in a dish or bowl with the meat from the lobster claws and some from the body, along with sliced cucumber.
Pour a little salad dressing over the mixture and mix gently.
Garnish with cucumber slices, pieces of lobster from the body, chopped egg whites, and yolks passed through a sieve.

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.

Endive + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together284 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Beetroot + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together678 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Beetroot + endivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together132 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Endive + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together87 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster: Provides the main protein and sweet, delicate flesh that anchors the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add richness and body, with the sieved yolks giving a creamy garnish.
Salad dressing: Adds moisture and fat that coat the greens and lobster, giving flavour and softness.
Salad greens: Provide a crisp, fresh base that contrasts with the tender lobster meat.

Swap the cucumber

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

Chivefits better
Spinachfits better
Mustardfits about as well
Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, egg, beetroot, endive, lettuce. 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.