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Lobster Salad

A chilled salad of diced lobster, lettuce, mayonnaise dressing, vinegar, oil, seasoning, capers, and coral garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster and set aside the coral.

  2. Cut the lobster meat into dice and refrigerate until needed.

  3. Marinate the lobster meat in vinegar, oil, and seasoning for extra flavor.

  4. Mix part of the mayonnaise dressing into the lobster meat.

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Wash the lettuce and soak it in ice water for at least 1 hour.

  2. Dry the lettuce and arrange two leaves together to form a shell or create a nest with smaller leaves on a flat dish.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Place a tablespoon of lobster in each shell and top with a teaspoon of dressing.

  2. Garnish with capers and sprinkle the pounded coral over the top.

  3. Arrange the lobster claws around the edge of the dish.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Vinegar + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,453 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lobster + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together102 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 meat
Provides the main protein and texture of the salad.
Lettuce
Forms crisp edible shells that hold the filling and add fresh crunch.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds richness and moisture, binding the lobster into a creamy filling.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the lobster meat.
Oil
Adds fat that carries flavor and keeps the lobster meat moist.

The step that matters

Soak the lettuce in ice water. Cold water firms and crisps the leaves by restoring cell turgor, so they hold their shape under the filling. Lettuce must be fully dried afterward, since residual water thins the dressing and makes the shells soggy.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersthe original
  3. Celeryfits less well
  4. Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, lettuce, 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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