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Boiled Lobster

A boiled lobster served with a mustard and egg yolk dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boiled Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the lobsters

  1. Boil a pot of water with coarse sea salt until it is boiling hard.

  2. Add the lobsters and boil for 30 minutes, or longer if they are very large.

  3. Remove the lobsters from the pot and let them drain.

  4. Open the lobsters and carefully extract the meat.

Make the dressing

  1. Cut the lobster meat and lettuce into small pieces.

  2. Mash the yolks of the hard boiled eggs with enough oil to make a smooth paste.

  3. Add vinegar, mustard, cayenne pepper, and salt to taste to the egg mixture.

Combine and serve

  1. Mix the dressing thoroughly with the lobster and lettuce, 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. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobsters
Provide the main meat, which is cooked by boiling until firm and opaque.
Hard boiled eggs yolks
Mashed with oil to form a smooth, rich base for the dressing.
Sweet oil
Adds fat and smoothness, turning the mashed yolks into a spreadable paste.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the dressing.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the dressing.

The step that matters

Boil the lobsters for the full time. Lobsters that are undercooked have translucent, soft meat that is unsafe and unpleasant, while overcooking makes the meat tough and rubbery. Timing for size matters for even cooking.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

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