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Salad

Lobster Salad Dressing

A dressing made with mustard, eggs, oil, vinegar, cream, and chopped lobster.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and lobster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine mustard, salt, black pepper, and red pepper.

  2. Add the yolks of 2 raw eggs and mix in the sweet oil gradually.

  3. Incorporate the vinegar slowly while mixing.

  4. Dissolve the yolks of 2 hard-boiled eggs with a little vinegar and mix into the dressing.

  5. Stir in the cream.

Finish with lobster

  1. Finally, add the chopped whites of the boiled eggs and the chopped lobster.

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. Cream + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Mustard + lobstertop 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

Raw egg yolks
Emulsifiers that help the oil and vinegar bind into a thick, smooth dressing.
Sweet oil
Provides fat and richness, giving the dressing its body and mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed and dissolved into the dressing to add body and a creamy, rich texture.
Lobster
Main protein, adding its sweet, delicate flavour and chunky texture to the salad.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually. Oil must be added slowly while mixing so the egg yolks can emulsify it. Adding it too fast can break the emulsion, leaving the dressing oily and separated instead of thick and smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Horseradishfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, vinegar, cream, lobster. 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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