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Lobster Salad

A chilled salad of lettuce, endive, seasonal greens, beetroot, hard‑boiled eggs, cucumber, and lobster, dressed with oil, vinegar, mustard, anchovy sauce, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and endive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Wash the salad and dry it by shaking in a cloth.

  2. Cut up the lettuces and endive, then pour the dressing on them.

  3. Lightly toss in the small salad.

Add the lobster

  1. Mix well with the lobster meat picked from the shell, cutting it into square pieces.

  2. Add half of the lobster meat to the salad and reserve the other half for garnishing.

Garnish and serve

  1. Chop the whites of the hard‑boiled eggs very fine and sieve the yolks.

  2. Arrange the salad on a glass dish, garnishing with sliced cucumber, lobster pieces, yolks, whites, coral, and beetroot in alternating small bunches for contrast.

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 + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Lettuce + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Endive + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

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 sweet, delicate seafood flavour and the substantial body of the salad.
Egg yolks
Their fat and lecithin help bind the oil and vinegar into a smooth, creamy dressing.
Oil
Supplies fat that gives the dressing a rich, smooth mouthfeel and carries flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the richness of oil and yolks.
Made mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the oil and vinegar into the dressing.
Anchovy sauce
Contributes savoury depth and umami that rounds out the dressing.

The step that matters

Pour the dressing on the cut lettuces and toss lightly. Dressing soaks into and wilts delicate leaves within minutes, so it should be added just before serving and tossed gently to keep the leaves crisp.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Horseradishfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, lettuce, endive, beetroot, egg, vinegar, mustard. 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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