Name: Lobster Salad
Ingredients: meat of lobster claws and body; lettuce or endive; soft part of lobster; spawn of hen-lobster; chili or tarragon vinegar; calf's-foot jelly (optional)

Why it works: Lettuce and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the meat from the claws and body of the lobster and cut it into small pieces.
Mix the lobster meat with lettuce or endive.
Separate the soft part of the lobster from the shell and blend it with the dressing ingredients.
If desired, add a little chili or tarragon vinegar for extra flavor.
For added richness, incorporate pieces of calf's-foot jelly.
You can also use crab or shrimp in the same manner.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together425 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together909 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Lobster + tarragontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together109 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
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).