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Lobster Salad

A salad of lobster meat dressed with a mustard and egg yolk vinaigrette served over lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Cook the lobster and remove the meat.

Make the dressing

  1. Mash the yolk of the hard-boiled egg finely.

  2. In a bowl, combine the mashed yolk, mustard, salt, oil, and vinegar to create a dressing.

Assemble and serve

  1. Toss the lobster meat with the dressing.

  2. Serve on a bed of lettuce.

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. Mustard + lettucetop 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. Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Lobster + lettucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together411 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main body of the salad, with tender meat that takes on the dressing.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Mashed into the dressing, it adds richness and body.
Oil
Emulsifies with the yolk and vinegar to thicken the dressing and add fat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil and yolk.
Mixed mustard
Helps bind the dressing and adds a sharp flavour that complements the lobster.

The step that matters

Combining the oil into the yolk. Oil must be added gradually to the mashed yolk so it emulsifies into a thick dressing; adding it too fast causes the dressing to split and turn greasy.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

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

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