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Salad

Lobster Salad

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

  1. Boil the lobster until cooked, then remove it from the shell, discarding the intestine and stomach.

  2. Wash the lettuce, dry it, tear it into pieces, and arrange it in a salad bowl with the lobster, saving some inner leaves for decoration.

Dress and serve

  1. In a small bowl, mix the oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper, then pour over the salad.

  2. Prepare mayonnaise as directed in the recipe for Cardinal Sauce, cover the salad with it, and decorate with olives, capers, coral or spawn, reserved lettuce leaves, and quartered hard boiled eggs.

  3. 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 rich, sweet meat that forms the body of the salad.
Hard boiled eggs
Add creamy richness and a firm, mild texture as a garnish.
Oil
Carries flavour and adds a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and cuts the richness of the lobster.

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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