Skip to main content
Main

Lobster and Salad

A salad of lettuce, endive, seasonal greens, beetroot, and hard‑boiled eggs, topped with lobster and a mustard‑oil dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and endive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Lobster and Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the lobster as directed in the recipe.

  2. Make a salad with lettuce, endive, seasonal greens, chopped beetroot, and 2 hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Wash the salad ingredients and dry them by lightly squeezing in a cloth.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, mix 3 to 4 tablespoons of oil, 2 tablespoons of vinegar, 1 teaspoon of mustard, and the yolks of 2 hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Optionally, add a small amount of anchovy sauce to the dressing.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine the dressing with the lobster meat and salad ingredients.

  2. Toss everything together gently with a wooden fork.

  3. Arrange the salad around the lobster and garnish with sliced beetroot, cucumber, and the divided yolks and whites of the eggs.

  4. Ensure the colors are blended tastefully.

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 + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Endive + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  5. Endive + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together121 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main meat, the centrepiece of the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and richness, and their yolks bind the dressing.
Oil
Adds fat and a smooth, rich mouthfeel to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the fat.
Prepared mustard
Helps emulsify the dressing so oil and vinegar stay combined.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp, leafy base that gives the salad its texture.

The step that matters

Dry the salad greens before dressing. Wet leaves dilute the dressing and make it slide off rather than cling, so the greens should be patted or squeezed dry first.

Swap the beetroot

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

  1. Beetrootthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Horseradishfits about as well

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

More lobster salad recipes

Dressing 7Cold 3 See all 290 →

You might also like

Lobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesCreamy Lettuce SoupCreamy Lettuce Soup8 recipesLettuce SoupLettuce Soup8 recipes