Name: Curried Lobster
Ingredients: lobster; curry powder; cooked rice; salt; butter

Why it works: Rice and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,645 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Curried Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the lobster and remove the meat from the shell.
Chop the lobster meat and mix it with curry powder and salt.
In a pan, melt butter and add the lobster mixture.
Stir until heated through.
Serve over cooked rice.

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.

Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,609 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Lobster + ricetop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together166 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).