Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Salad

A salad made with cooked lobster, mayonnaise, lettuce, boiled eggs, and olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Cut the meat of the lobsters into small pieces.

  2. Add the fat and coral, then season with salt and pepper.

  3. Pour enough mayonnaise dressing to moisten the mixture well.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place in a salad bowl and garnish with lettuce.

  2. Pour the remaining dressing over the salad and top with slices of boiled egg and olives.

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 + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Lobster + olivetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together252 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

Lobsters
Provide the main meat and rich flavor of the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing
Moistens the lobster pieces and adds creamy richness and fat.
Boiled eggs
Add a soft, creamy texture and mild flavor contrast.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, pepper, egg, olive. 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.

More lobster salad recipes

Dressing 7Cold 3 See all 290 →

You might also like

Lobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesCreamy Lettuce SoupCreamy Lettuce Soup8 recipesLettuce SoupLettuce Soup8 recipes