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Lobster Salad

A salad of canned lobster mixed with egg yolks, oil, vinegar, mustard, salt, cayenne, and lemon juice, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Open the can of lobster and drain it well through a colander.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mash the hard-boiled egg yolks into a paste.

  2. Add the raw egg yolks, oil, vinegar, mustard, and salt to the mashed yolks and mix well until smooth.

  3. Sprinkle cayenne pepper over the mixture and squeeze in the lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Serve on a bed of lettuce if desired.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and vinegar, giving the dressing a smooth, thick body.
Oil
Provides fat that makes the dressing rich and creamy when emulsified.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Mustard
Helps stabilize the emulsion and adds a sharp, pungent flavor.
Hard-boiled eggs
Mashed yolks form a paste that thickens and adds body to the dressing.

The step that matters

Mix well until smooth. Oil must be emulsified gradually with the yolks and mustard; if it is added too fast or not mixed enough, the dressing can separate or stay greasy instead of creamy.

Swap the lettuce

The recipe marks lettuce as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, egg, vinegar, mustard, pepper, lemon):

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

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