Skip to main content
Salad

Lobster Salad

A salad of cooked lobster, lettuce, and egg yolk dressing with butter, cayenne, salt, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,037 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Layer the chopped lettuce and picked lobster in a serving dish.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with melted butter, cayenne pepper, salt, sugar, and vinegar.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the salad just before serving.

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

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

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobsters
Provide the main protein and the sweet, tender meat of the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks form a creamy emulsion that thickens the dressing and gives it body.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the richness of butter and yolk.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that rounds out the acidity and the cayenne heat.

The step that matters

Pour the dressing over the salad just before serving. Vinegar and the acid in the dressing gradually wilt lettuce, so adding it at the last moment keeps the leaves crisp and the salad fresh.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

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

More lobster salad recipes

Dressing 7Cold 3 See all 290 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes