Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Salad

A chilled salad of lobster meat with a dressing of egg yolk, mustard, vinegar, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the lobster

  1. Boil lobster until cooked, then cool and remove meat from shell, or use canned lobster.

  2. Line salad bowl with lettuce leaves and add lobster meat.

  3. Refrigerate salad until ready to serve, without adding dressing.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. Beat egg yolks with salt, sugar, mustard, white pepper, oil, and vinegar until well combined.

  2. Fold in whipped cream just before serving.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lettuce + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Lobster + mustardtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and vinegar into a thick, creamy dressing.
Oil
Adds richness and smooth body to the dressing.
White vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances richness.
Prepared mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, tangy note.
Whipped cream
Lightens the dressing with air and fat for a softer texture.

The step that matters

Fold in whipped cream just before serving. Whipped cream is a foam that deflates over time and can thin or weep when left in the dressing. Folding it in gently at the last moment keeps the air and body intact.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, lettuce, egg, sugar, mustard, butter, vinegar. 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.

More lobster salad recipes

Dressing 7Cold 3 See all 290 →

You might also like

Lobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesCreamy Lettuce SoupCreamy Lettuce Soup8 recipesLettuce SoupLettuce Soup8 recipes