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Salad

German Lobster Salad

A salad of boiled lobster meat mixed with herbs, mayonnaise, and garnished with egg whites, yolks, anchovies, and caviar croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

German Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the flesh from the body and claws of the boiled lobsters and cut it into long strips.

  2. Place the lobster strips in a salad bowl.

Make the salad

  1. Finely mince shallots, parsley, tarragon, and chervil according to the quantity of salad needed.

  2. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, olive oil, and vinegar, then combine it with the lobster meat.

  3. Pour mayonnaise sauce over the lobster mixture.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with coarsely chopped egg whites, egg yolks, lobster coral, rolled anchovies, and capers.

  2. Dress small round caviar croutons around the dish as a border.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Shallot + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main body of the salad, with tender meat that is the centrepiece of the dish.
Egg yolks
Form the base of the mayonnaise sauce, which gives the salad its rich, creamy texture.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness to the seasoning and the mayonnaise, carrying flavour through the salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the lobster and balances the richness of the mayonnaise.
Shallots
Add a sharp, savoury onion flavour that cuts through the sweetness of the lobster.

The step that matters

Make the mayonnaise sauce. Mayonnaise is an emulsion of oil and egg yolk. If the oil is added too fast or the ingredients are too cold, it can split and look greasy. Adding the oil slowly while whisking keeps it smooth and creamy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, shallot, tarragon, chervil, pepper, olive, vinegar):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Fennelfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, shallot, tarragon, chervil, pepper, olive, 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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