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Lobster Salad

A salad of cooked lobster, lettuce, hard‑boiled eggs, olives, capers, and mayonnaise, dressed with oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobster until cooked.

  2. Remove the lobster from the shell, discarding the intestine and stomach.

  3. If available, save the coral, green fat, or spawn for decoration.

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Wash the lettuce, dry the lettuce, and tear the lettuce into pieces.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the lettuce and lobster in a salad bowl, reserving some inner leaves for decoration.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

  3. Pour the dressing over the salad.

  4. Prepare the mayonnaise as directed in the recipe for Cardinal Sauce.

  5. Cover the salad with the mayonnaise.

  6. Decorate with olives, capers, coral or spawn, reserved lettuce leaves, and quartered hard boiled eggs.

  7. Serve immediately.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  5. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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 sweet, rich flavor of the salad.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp base that holds the dressing and other ingredients.
Oil
Adds fat and carries flavor through the vinaigrette dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the lobster.
Mayonnaise
Adds creamy fat and moisture that coats the salad.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and texture as a decorative and filling element.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, vinegar, pepper, olive, capers, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, vinegar, pepper, olive, capers, egg. 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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