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Lobster Salad

A salad of lobster meat, hard‑cooked eggs, French dressing, mayonnaise, lettuce, olives, and chives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 261 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the lobster meat with the chopped hard-cooked eggs.

  2. Marinate with French dressing, then drain.

Dress and serve

  1. Add mayonnaise dressing and mix well.

  2. Serve on a bed of lettuce.

  3. Garnish with chopped olives.

  4. Sprinkle with finely chopped chives.

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 + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together261 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  3. Olive + chivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Lobster + lettucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together411 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 meat
Provides the main body and sweet flavor of the salad.
Hard-cooked eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture that binds the salad.
French dressing
Seasons the lobster with acidity and flavor before it is drained.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture, giving the salad a creamy coating.

The step that matters

Drain after marinating. Excess French dressing left on the lobster would thin the mayonnaise dressing and make the salad watery. Draining first lets the mayonnaise coat the pieces and hold its creamy texture.

Swap the chive

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Chivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, egg, lettuce, olive. 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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