Name: Lobstee Salad
Ingredients: 1 large lobster; 3 tablespoons French mustard or 2 teaspoons common mixed mustard; 1½ cups vinegar; 1½ cups sweet oil; 5 hard boiled egg yolks; coarse sea salt to taste; 1 teaspoon Cayenne pepper; inside leaves of 2 heads of cabbage lettuce

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce 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 ↓

Lobstee Salad

Ingredients

1 large lobster
3 tablespoons French mustard or 2 teaspoons common mixed mustard
1½ cups vinegar
1½ cups sweet oil
5 hard boiled egg yolks
coarse sea salt to taste
1 teaspoon Cayenne pepper
inside leaves of 2 heads of cabbage lettuce

Directions

Prepare

Cut the lobster meat and lettuce into small pieces.
Boil the eggs hard, then mash the yolks with a spoon.

Combine and serve

In a bowl, combine the lobster, lettuce, mustard, vinegar, sweet oil, egg yolks, salt, and Cayenne pepper, then mix well and serve chilled.

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.

Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together622 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster: Forms the main body of the salad as the protein.
Hard boiled egg yolks: Mashed yolks add richness and a creamy body to the dressing.
Sweet oil: Adds fat and smoothness, carrying flavour through the dressing.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the oil.
Mustard: Adds sharp flavour and helps the oil and vinegar stay emulsified.

Swap the cabbage

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

Horseradishfits better
Cucumberfits better
Beetrootfits better
Cabbagethe original

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