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Salad

Lobster Salad

A salad of lobster, lettuce, and eggs dressed with a butter, mustard, cayenne, salt, sugar, and vinegar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the lobsters, then remove the meat and chop it into pieces.

  2. Finely chop the lettuce and layer it in a salad bowl with the lobster.

  3. Boil the eggs, then mash the yolks.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. Mix the mashed yolks with butter, mustard, cayenne pepper, salt, sugar, and vinegar.

  2. Heat the mixture and pour it over the salad just before serving.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 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

Lobsters
Provide the main protein and sweet, tender meat for the salad.
Eggs
Egg yolks mashed into the mixture add richness and help bind the dressing.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture in the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the yolks and butter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharp vinegar and cayenne.

The step that matters

Heat the dressing without overcooking it. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the mixture gets too hot it can scramble and turn grainy. Heat it gently and pour it over the salad just before serving.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Horseradishfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

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