Name: Crab Salad
Ingredients: 2 heads of lettuce; flesh of 2 boiled crabs; mayonnaise dressing; hard-boiled eggs for garnish

Why it works: Lettuce and crab work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 111 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Crab Salad

Ingredients

2 heads of lettuce
flesh of 2 boiled crabs
mayonnaise dressing
hard-boiled eggs for garnish

Directions

Prepare

Break the crab flesh into small pieces.

Assemble and serve

Place the crab pieces and lettuce in a salad bowl.
Pour mayonnaise dressing over the salad.
Garnish with sliced hard-boiled 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.

Lettuce + crabtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together111 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Crab + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together467 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Lettuce + eggtop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,301 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce: Forms the leafy base and bulk of the salad, adding crisp texture.
Crab flesh: Provides the main protein and savory, delicate flavor of the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and creaminess, coating the leaves and crab to carry flavor and moisture.