Why it works: Lobster and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 411 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓
Lobster Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the lobster
Cut the lobster meat into dice and season with French dressing.
Chill on ice for 3 hours.
Prepare the lettuce
Wash the lettuce thoroughly and soak in ice water for 2 hours.
Drain and dry the lettuce on a towel.
Gently pull apart the larger leaves.
Assemble and serve
Mix ½ cup mayonnaise with the lettuce and place it on a bed of lettuce leaves.
Spread the remaining mayonnaise over the top and decorate with the small claws.
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.
-
Lobster + lettucetop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 meaty texture and bulk of the salad.
- Lettuce
- Adds crisp texture and a cool, fresh base for the salad.
- Mayonnaise
- Adds richness and moisture, binding the salad together with fat.
The step that matters
Drain and dry the lettuce on a towel.. Excess water left on the lettuce dilutes the mayonnaise and makes the salad watery, so the leaves must be dry before mixing.
“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
You might also like
Lobster Sauce174 recipes
Lobster Croquettes99 recipes
Creamy Lettuce Soup8 recipes
Lettuce Soup8 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.