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Salad

Lobster Salad

A chilled salad of lobster, potatoes, eggs, olives, pickles, walnuts, and onion dressed with a sweet mustard vinaigrette.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. In a large dish, combine the lobster, potatoes, eggs, olives, pickles, walnut meats, and grated onion.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, bring the vinegar to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, mix the sugar, mustard, and flour together dry.

  3. Add the egg and melted butter to the dry mixture, then slowly stir in the hot vinegar.

  4. Let the dressing cool, then thin it with sweet cream or milk.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the salad ingredients and mix gently.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Olive + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  5. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Hard boiled eggs add richness and body to the salad, and the whole egg in the dressing thickens it as it cooks.
Flour
Starch that thickens the dressing as it heats with the vinegar, giving it body instead of a runny finish.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard in the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the dressing its tang and cuts the richness of eggs and butter.
Butter
Adds fat and smoothness to the dressing, mellowing its sharp flavours.
Potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and soak up the dressing, adding soft, starchy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the hot vinegar to the dry mixture. Pouring the vinegar in slowly while stirring keeps the egg from scrambling and lets the flour starch gelatinise evenly, so the dressing thickens smoothly rather than becoming lumpy.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, potato, egg, olive, meat, onion, vinegar):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, potato, egg, olive, meat, onion, 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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