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Lobster Salad

A salad of cooked lobster mixed with mayonnaise, salt, pepper, lemon juice, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Cook the lobster until done, then cool and remove the meat from the shell.

  2. Chop the lobster meat into bite-sized pieces.

Dress and serve

  1. In a bowl, combine the lobster meat with mayonnaise, salt, pepper, and lemon juice to taste.

  2. Serve the lobster mixture on a bed of lettuce.

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

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

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

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

  3. Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Lobster + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,247 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
Provides the main protein and the meaty texture of the salad.
Mayonnaise
Binds the lobster pieces and adds richness and moisture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the mayonnaise.

The step that matters

Cook the lobster until done, then cool. Overcooked lobster becomes tough and rubbery, while undercooked meat is unsafe. Cooling it before mixing keeps the mayonnaise from thinning and separating.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, pepper, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Lettucethe original
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, 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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