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Lobster Salad

A chilled salad of lobster meat, vinegar, celery or lettuce, and salad dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and meat work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 909 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Open the lobster carefully and remove all the meat.

  2. Chop the lobster meat coarsely and mix with a little vinegar.

  3. Let the mixture stand for a few hours.

Assemble and serve

  1. Chop some celery or lettuce.

  2. Just before serving, combine the lobster mixture with the chopped celery or lettuce and add salad dressing.

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. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Vinegar + celerytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,627 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Meat + celerytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,880 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lobster + celerytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together251 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Lobster + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together692 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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 sweet, delicate flavor.
Vinegar
Acidity brightens the lobster and slightly firms its surface texture during standing.
Celery or lettuce
Adds crisp texture and freshness that contrasts with the soft lobster.
Salad dressing
Adds moisture, fat and seasoning that bind the salad together.

The step that matters

Adding the dressing just before serving. Vegetables and dressing left together for long periods release water and soften, so the salad loses crispness. Combining at the last moment keeps the celery or lettuce crisp.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, 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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Dressing 7Cold 3 See all 290 →

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