Why it works: Lobster and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 411 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓
Lobster Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the lobster
Plunge the lobster head down into a kettle of warm water to submerge it completely.
Cover and bring to a boil, then add salt and boil for 30 minutes.
Remove the lobster and let it cool until manageable.
Prepare the meat
Break apart the tail and body, twisting off the claws.
Remove the body meat and set aside the green fat and coral.
Discard the stomach and gills, then pick out the meat from the body and claws.
Cut the soft shell of the tail and draw out the meat, removing the intestine.
Cut all meat into ½ inch pieces and marinate with French dressing.
Serve
Arrange on lettuce leaves and garnish with mayonnaise.
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.
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Lobster + lettucetop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together411 recipes
Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Lobster
- Its firm meat is the main component, and cooking it sets the proteins into a tender, sliceable texture.
- French dressing
- Its acid and oil flavor the lobster meat and add moisture to the cut pieces.
- Mayonnaise
- Its fat and emulsified richness add creaminess and a smooth mouthfeel to the salad.
The step that matters
Boil the lobster for the stated time. Overcooking toughens lobster meat because its proteins tighten and squeeze out moisture, so the timed boil should be watched closely.
“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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