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Salad

Lobster Salad

Finely minced lobster mixed with a paste of egg yolks, salad oil, powdered sugar, cayenne pepper, salt, mustard, and vinegar, finished with celery or lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the cooked lobster and mince it very fine.

  2. Mash the hard-boiled egg yolks into a paste with the salad oil.

Season and serve

  1. Add the powdered sugar, cayenne pepper, salt, mustard, and vinegar to the paste, stirring well.

  2. Just before serving, mix in the chopped celery or lettuce leaves.

  3. Adjust seasoning if necessary, then garnish with sliced hard-boiled eggs.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main body of the salad, with tender, sweet meat.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed with oil to form a rich, creamy base that binds the salad.
Salad oil
Adds fat and smoothness, carrying the flavors through the egg yolk paste.
Powdered sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich egg and oil base.
Celery or lettuce leaves
Adds crisp texture and freshness just before serving.

The step that matters

Mash the yolks into a smooth paste with the oil. Egg yolks emulsify with oil only when worked gradually; lumps or a broken, greasy texture result if the oil is added too fast or the yolks are not mashed fine first.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, egg, sugar, pepper, mustard, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, egg, sugar, pepper, mustard, vinegar. 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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