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Lobster Salad

A salad of chopped lobster, lettuce, and a mustard‑butter dressing with hard‑boiled egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

  1. Chop the lobsters and lettuce together.

  2. Separate the yolks and whites of the hard-boiled eggs.

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the yolks to a fine paste and mix in the mustard, melted butter, salt, and red pepper.

  2. Slowly pour in the vinegar while stirring the egg mixture.

  3. Combine the dressing with the lobster and lettuce.

Assemble

  1. Slice the egg whites and lay them on top of the salad.

  2. Garnish with additional 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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobsters
Provides the main meaty body of the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks form a creamy base that thickens the dressing; whites add structure.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, coating texture to the dressing.
Lettuce
Adds crisp texture and bulk to the salad.

The step that matters

Slowly pour in the vinegar while stirring the egg mixture. Egg yolks are emulsifiers, and adding acid too quickly can cause the mixture to curdle or separate. Adding it slowly while stirring lets the dressing stay smooth and cohesive.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

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