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Salad

Lobster Salads

A salad dressing made with lobster, egg yolks, mustard, sweet oil, vinegar, salt, served over lettuce or celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and lettuce 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 ↓

Lobster Salads

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the egg yolks until light.

  2. Add the mustard and mix well.

  3. Stir in the sweet oil, vinegar, and salt.

  4. Incorporate the soft part of the lobster into the mixture.

Assemble the salad

  1. Pour the dressing over the hard lobster pieces.

  2. Moisten the lettuce with the dressing and mix everything together.

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. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lobster + mustardtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Lobster + lettucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together411 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and vinegar into a thick, creamy dressing.
Sweet oil
Adds richness and body, coating the lobster and lettuce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Mixed mustard
Helps bind the emulsion and adds a sharp, tangy flavor.
Lobster
Provides the main protein, with soft and hard pieces adding texture.

The step that matters

Incorporate the soft part of the lobster into the mixture. Blending the soft lobster into the dressing helps it spread evenly and carry flavor, while the hard pieces are kept separate so they keep their firm texture.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, egg, mustard, 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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