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Salad

Lobster Salad

A salad of lobster meat, lettuce or celery, hard‑boiled egg yolks, and a dressing of olive oil, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, 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: Lettuce and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the meat from the hen lobster and chop it, setting aside the coral.

  2. Mix the lobster meat with chopped lettuce or celery immediately after chopping.

Make the dressing

  1. Mash the egg yolks until smooth.

  2. Gradually add olive oil, salt, sugar, cayenne pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and vinegar to the yolks, mixing well.

  3. Pound the coral finely and mix it into the dressing.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the lobster and serve immediately.

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. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  4. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard boiled egg yolks
Mashed into a smooth base that emulsifies the olive oil and holds the dressing together.
Olive oil
Adds richness and fat, giving the dressing a smooth, creamy texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the yolks and oil.
Lobster meat
Provides the main flesh of the salad, with its mild sweetness.
Coral
Adds a rich, briny flavour and colour to the dressing once pounded fine.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually to the yolks. Oil must be added slowly while mixing so it emulsifies into the yolks; adding it all at once can split the dressing into separate oil and liquid.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, lobster, egg, olive, sugar, pepper, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, egg, olive, sugar, pepper, sauce. 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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