Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: lobster meat; mayonnaise dressing; lettuce leaves; whites of hard-boiled eggs

Why it works: Lobster and meat work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 909 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

lobster meat
mayonnaise dressing
lettuce leaves
whites of hard-boiled eggs

Directions

Prepare

Cut lobster meat into dice using a silver knife.
Refrigerate the diced lobster until ready to use.

Assemble and serve

Mix the lobster with mayonnaise dressing.
Place the mixture on a bed of lettuce leaves.
Garnish with the whites of hard-boiled eggs.
Serve 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 + meattop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together909 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Lobster + lettucetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together411 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Meat + lettucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together579 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,432 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Lobster + eggtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,484 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat: Provides the main flavour and tender, meaty texture of the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and moisture, binding the lobster and coating it with creamy richness.