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Lobster Salad

A salad of boiled lobster served on lettuce and watercress with a French dressing of olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobster until cooked.

  2. Remove the meat from the shell and chop it.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper to make a French dressing.

Assemble and serve

  1. Serve the lobster on a bed of lettuce with watercress and a little English mustard.

  2. Drizzle the dressing over the lobster salad.

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 + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Watercress + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together293 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main protein and the salad's central texture and flavor.
Olive oil
Forms the fat base of the French dressing, adding richness and carrying flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the dressing, balancing the richness of the oil and lobster.
English mustard
Adds sharp heat and aroma that complement the sweetness of the lobster.

The step that matters

Drizzle the dressing over the lobster salad. Oil and vinegar separate quickly, so the dressing should be freshly mixed and well emulsified just before use. Adding it at the last moment keeps the lettuce crisp and the dressing evenly distributed.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, watercress, mustard, olive, vinegar, 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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