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Lobster Salad

A chilled salad of boiled lobster mixed with a light dressing of oil, cream, lemon, mustard, vinegar, sugar, salt, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Pick the lobster into pieces.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks, sugar, salt, mustard, and cayenne until light.

  2. Gradually add the salad oil while continuing to beat until thick.

  3. Whip in the lemon juice.

  4. Beat for five minutes before adding the vinegar.

Assemble and serve

  1. Just before serving, fold half of the whipped cream into the dressing and mix with the lobster.

  2. Line a salad bowl with lettuce leaves, add the lobster mixture, and top with the remaining whipped cream.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Forms the main body of the salad and supplies its sweet, delicate meat.
Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil into a thick, stable dressing through their lecithin.
Salad oil
Provides fat and a rich, smooth body to the dressing.
Sweet cream
Adds lightness and a creamy, airy texture when folded in whipped.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that balances the richness of the oil and cream.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that cuts through fat and sharpens the flavour.

The step that matters

Gradually add the salad oil while beating. Oil must be added slowly so the egg yolks can emulsify it into a thick dressing. Adding it too fast lets the oil separate, leaving a greasy, runny dressing that will not hold together.

“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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