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Lobster Salad

A salad of lobster meat, lettuce, and a creamy oil‑vinegar mustard dressing, garnished with cucumber pickles, egg rings, parsley, and beet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

  1. Cut the lobster meat into nice square pieces.

  2. Chop the lettuce and mix it with the lobster.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine the oil, vinegar, mustard, egg yolks, pepper, and salt.

  2. Rub the mixture smooth to form a creamy sauce.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Cover the lobster with the sauce.

  2. Garnish with sliced cucumber pickles, egg rings, parsley, and cold beet cut in fancy shapes.

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. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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 as the protein.
Oil
Provides fat that gives the sauce its richness and creamy body.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil to thicken the sauce into a creamy texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the fat.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, savoury note.
Lettuce
Adds crisp texture and a fresh base for the lobster.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture smooth to form a creamy sauce. The oil must be emulsified with the egg yolks and mustard to form a stable, creamy sauce. If the mixture is not worked smoothly or the oil is added too quickly, it can separate and look greasy instead of creamy.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Horseradishfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Cucumberthe original
  4. Spinachfits about as well

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