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Lobster Salad

A salad made with lobster meat, egg yolk dressing, mustard, oil, vinegar, salt, and lettuce or celery.

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

Make the dressing

  1. Remove all the meat from the lobster.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks until smooth. Add the mustard and continue beating while slowly adding the salad oil.

  3. Mix in the vinegar and salt to taste.

  4. Incorporate the soft part of the lobster into the dressing.

Assemble the salad

  1. Moisten the remaining lobster meat with the dressing and place it at the bottom of a serving bowl.

  2. Chop the lettuce and toss it in the dressing, then layer it over the lobster.

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

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil into the dressing, giving it a smooth, thick body.
Salad oil
Provides fat and richness, forming the body of the emulsified dressing with the yolks.
Made mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion so the oil stays blended into the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil.
Lobster
Main protein; its meat is folded into the dressing to moisten and flavour the salad.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly while beating. Oil must be added in a slow, steady stream while beating so the yolks can emulsify it. Adding it too fast can cause the dressing to separate and become greasy rather than smooth and thick.

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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