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Salmon and Lobster Salad

A salad of canned salmon, greens, hard‑boiled eggs, and a dressing of oil or milk, vinegar, sugar, salt, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Salmon and Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon and greens

  1. Drain the oil from the canned salmon.

  2. Mince the salmon finely.

  3. Chop the lettuce or celery.

  4. Mix the chopped greens with the salmon.

Make the dressing

  1. Boil the eggs hard.

  2. Cool the eggs in cold water.

  3. Shell the eggs.

  4. Separate the whites from the yolks.

  5. Mash the yolks smooth with the olive oil or milk/cream.

  6. Dissolve the vinegar, sugar, salt, and mustard in a bowl.

  7. Mix the dissolved mixture with the yolk paste.

Combine and serve

  1. Toss the mixture lightly with the salmon and greens using a silver fork.

  2. Garnish the dish with celery leaves, parsley, and egg whites cut into rings.

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

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Salmon
Forms the bulk of the salad and supplies its main flavour and protein texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks mashed with oil or cream form a rich, smooth binding for the dressing.
Olive oil or milk/cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the yolk paste smooth and creamy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the richness of the yolks.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that complements the salmon and vinegar.

The step that matters

Mash the yolks smooth before adding the vinegar mixture. Yolks mashed with fat form a stable emulsion-like paste; if the vinegar is added first or the yolks are left lumpy, the dressing will look broken and grainy rather than creamy.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

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