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Lobster Salad

A chilled salad of lobster meat mixed with egg yolks, butter or oil, sugar, vinegar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. Combine lobster meat and egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Mix in butter or oil until well blended.

  3. Add sugar, vinegar, and mustard; stir until smooth.

Serve

  1. Serve chilled.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  5. Lobster + mustardtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the main body of the salad and supplies its sweet, delicate flavour.
Egg yolks
Emulsify the fat and help thicken the dressing into a smooth, creamy texture.
Butter or oil
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the dressing.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with gentle sweetness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts through the richness of the fat.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion of yolks and fat.

The step that matters

Blending the butter or oil into the egg yolks. Egg yolks hold fat in a stable emulsion, giving a smooth, thick dressing. If the fat goes in too quickly, the mixture can separate and look greasy and broken.

“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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