Name: Fish Salad
Ingredients: cooked lobster; cold turbot or large soles; mayonnaise; cayenne pepper; anchovy essence or anchovy butter; lobster coral; fresh salad greens

Why it works: Turbot and anchovy match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 110 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the lobster and fish into oblique slices to increase their size.
Arrange the lobster and fish slices alternately on a serving dish.
Prepare a mayonnaise sauce, adding cayenne, anchovy essence, and lobster coral to taste.
Form a high border with 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 + 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).
Pepper + anchovytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,232 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Lobster + peppertop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,247 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).