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Salad

Lobster Salad

A chilled salad of lobster meat, lettuce, mayonnaise, hard‑boiled eggs, capers, and lobster claws.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a nest using the hearts of lettuce.

  2. Mix the lobster meat with mayonnaise.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the lettuce nest with the lobster mixture.

  2. Top with a spoonful of mayonnaise.

  3. Garnish with small lobster claws, sliced hard-boiled eggs, and capers.

  4. Serve ice cold.

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.

  1. Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Lobster + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together102 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Lobster + lettucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together411 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Meat + lettucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the main body of the salad and provides its savory flavor and tender texture.
Mayonnaise
Binds the lobster pieces together and adds moisture and richness.
Hearts of lettuce
Forms the crisp base that holds the salad in a nest shape.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add creamy texture and a mild, rich flavor as a garnish.
Capers
Add acidity and a sharp, briny bite that cuts through the richness.

The step that matters

Serve ice cold. Lobster and mayonnaise are perishable and soften at warm temperatures, so keeping the salad chilled preserves texture and limits bacterial growth. Cold also firms the mayonnaise, helping it hold its shape on the lettuce.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, egg, capers):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Lettucethe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, egg, capers. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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