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Salad

Lobster Salad

A salad of boiled lobster meat and lettuce dressed with a mustard, oil, vinegar and egg yolk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster and lettuce

  1. Remove the meat from the body and claws of the boiled lobster and cut it finely.

  2. Mash the coral with a wooden spoon.

  3. Wash and chop the blanched lettuce finely and mix it with the lobster.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine salt, cayenne, mustard, salad oil, and vinegar.

  2. Mash the hard-boiled egg yolks and mix them with the coral into the sauce.

Serve

  1. Add the sauce to the salad just before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the main body of the salad and provides its flavour.
Lettuce
Adds crisp texture and bulk to the salad.
Egg yolks
Mashed into the sauce, they thicken it and give it a rich, creamy body.
Salad oil
Supplies fat that carries flavour and gives the sauce a smooth texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the richness of oil and yolk.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the oil and vinegar into the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the sauce to the salad just before serving. Acid and salt in the dressing draw moisture out of lettuce, so it wilts and turns limp if dressed too early. Adding the sauce at the last moment keeps the lettuce crisp.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, pepper, mustard, vinegar, egg. 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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