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Lobster Salad

A salad of boiled lobster, lettuce, egg yolks, and a dressing of sweet oil, vinegar, mustard, cayenne pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Extract all the meat from the lobster shells and cut it into very small pieces.

  2. Chop the lettuce as finely as possible.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, sweet oil, vinegar, mustard, cayenne, and salt until well combined.

Assemble and serve

  1. Just before serving, pour the dressing over the lobster and lettuce, and mix thoroughly.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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 body of the salad.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and vinegar into a thick, creamy dressing.
Sweet oil
Adds richness and moisture, carrying the flavour of the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Dress just before serving. Acid and salt in the dressing gradually soften the lettuce and draw moisture from the lobster, so the salad becomes limp and watery if it sits too long.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

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