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Salad

German Lobster Salad

A chilled salad of boiled lobster meat mixed with herbs, shallots, and a mayonnaise vinaigrette, topped with egg whites, yolks, anchovies, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

German Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Remove the flesh from the body and claws of the boiled lobsters and cut it into strips.

  2. In a salad bowl, combine the lobster meat with minced shallots, parsley, tarragon, chervil, salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar.

  3. Pour mayonnaise sauce over the lobster mixture and mix well.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with chopped egg whites, egg yolks, lobster coral, anchovies, and capers.

  2. Arrange small round caviar croutons around the dish for an extra touch.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Shallot + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main meaty body and sweet flavour of the salad.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds richness and moisture, binding the lobster into a creamy, cohesive salad.
Egg yolks
Contribute richness and fat, and form the emulsion base of the mayonnaise sauce.
Shallots
Add a mild, sharp onion-like aroma and bite that cuts the richness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the lobster and balances the mayonnaise.

The step that matters

Pour mayonnaise sauce over the lobster mixture and mix well.. Lobster meat is delicate and can be broken into shreds or become watery if overworked. Folding gently keeps the pieces intact while coating them evenly with the emulsified sauce, so the salad stays creamy rather than mushy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, shallot, tarragon, chervil, pepper, vinegar, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Fennelfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, shallot, tarragon, chervil, pepper, vinegar, sauce. 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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