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Salad

Dressing for Lobster Salad

A dressing made from raw egg yolks, hard‑boiled eggs, salad oil, salt, mustard, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,424 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Dressing for Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the raw egg yolks and hard-boiled eggs until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the salad oil while mixing.

  3. Season with salt, mustard, and sugar to taste.

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. Mustard + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolks
Emulsify the oil into the dressing and give it a rich, thick body.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a smooth, creamy texture to the dressing.
Salad oil
Provides the fat that forms the creamy, thick body of the dressing.

The step that matters

Gradually add the salad oil while mixing. Adding oil too fast can break the emulsion, so the dressing separates and turns oily instead of thick and smooth. Slow addition lets the yolk lecithin surround the oil droplets.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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