Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: 1 hen lobster (or 2 medium-sized lobsters); ½ cup mayonnaise; small salad herbs or young lettuces; 2 hard-boiled eggs

Why it works: Lobster and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 411 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

1 hen lobster (or 2 medium-sized lobsters)
½ cup mayonnaise
small salad herbs or young lettuces
2 hard-boiled eggs

Directions

Make the sauce

Pound the coral of the lobster through a sieve.
Mix the resulting pulp gradually with mayonnaise.

Assemble and serve

Fill a serving dish with small salad herbs or finely shredded young lettuces.
Arrange alternate slices of lobster flesh and thinly cut hard-boiled eggs spirally or in a chain on top of the salad.
Leave a space in the center for the sauce.
Lightly top the sauce with some small salad.
Serve the dish immediately.

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 + lettucetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together411 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Lobster + eggtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,484 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
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

Lobster: Provides the main flesh and the coral, whose pulp gives the sauce its colour and flavour.
Mayonnaise: Forms the creamy base of the sauce, adding richness and moisture.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add firm, mild texture and body to the salad layers.