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Lobster Salad

A salad of lettuce, endive, seasonal greens, beetroot, hard‑boiled eggs, and lobster, dressed with oil, vinegar, mustard, anchovy sauce, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and endive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Wash the salad and dry it by shaking in a cloth.

  2. Cut up the lettuces.

  3. Cut up the endive.

  4. Pour the dressing over the lettuces and endive.

Add the lobster and garnish

  1. Toss in the small salad.

  2. Mix the small salad with the lobster pickings.

  3. Remove the meat from the lobster shell.

  4. Cut the lobster meat into square pieces.

  5. Add half of the lobster pieces to the salad.

  6. Reserve the other half of the lobster pieces for garnishing.

  7. Chop the whites of the hard-boiled eggs finely.

  8. Rub the egg yolks through a sieve.

  9. Arrange the salad on a glass dish.

  10. Garnish with sliced cucumber, lobster pieces, egg yolks, egg whites, coral, and beetroot in alternating small bunches.

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 + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Endive + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hen lobster
Provides the sweet, tender meat that forms the main protein of the salad.
Egg yolks
Their emulsifying fats help bind the oil and vinegar into a smooth, stable dressing.
Oil
Supplies fat that carries flavour and gives the dressing a silky mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the lobster and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Made mustard
Acts as a second emulsifier and adds a sharp, savoury note to the dressing.
Lettuces
Form the crisp, cool base that holds the dressing and the other ingredients.

The step that matters

Dry the salad before dressing it. Wet leaves dilute the dressing and make it slide off rather than cling. Shaking the greens in a cloth removes surface water so the dressing coats each leaf evenly.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, lettuce, endive, beetroot, egg, vinegar, mustard):

  1. Horseradishfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, lettuce, endive, beetroot, egg, vinegar, mustard. 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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