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Lobster Salad

A chilled salad of diced lobster mixed with French dressing and mayonnaise, served on lettuce leaves and garnished with capers, coral, claws, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Season the diced lobster meat with French dressing.

  2. Keep it on ice until ready to serve.

  3. Mix the lobster with ½ cup of mayonnaise dressing.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Make nests with crisp lettuce leaves, breaking poorer leaves to mix with the lobster.

  2. Place a large spoonful of the lobster mixture in each lettuce leaf.

  3. Top with a spoonful of dressing.

  4. Garnish with capers, pounded coral, lobster claws, and parsley around the edge.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  4. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Lobster + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together102 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

Lobster meat
Provides the main protein and the sweet, delicate flesh that forms the salad's body.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds moisture and richness, binding the lobster pieces together and coating them.
Crisp lettuce leaves
Provide a crisp, cool base that holds the lobster and contrasts with its soft texture.

The step that matters

Keeping the lobster on ice. Lobster meat spoils quickly at warm temperatures and its delicate flesh can turn soft and watery, so it should stay cold until serving.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, lettuce, capers):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Celeryfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, lettuce, capers. 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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