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Lobster Salad

A salad of boiled lobster, lettuce, endive, cucumber, beetroot, radish, and hard‑boiled eggs dressed with oil, mustard, vinegar, and chili.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Wash and dry the endive and lettuces, then cut them finely or tear them into pieces.

  2. In a bowl, combine the greens with the picked meat from the lobster and some salad dressing.

Garnish and dress

  1. Pass the coral and yolks of the hard-boiled eggs through a sieve and sprinkle over the salad.

  2. Arrange sliced cucumber, beetroot, and radishes on top, and add a border of quartered hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Mix the lobster meat with beaten egg yolks, salad oil, mustard, vinegar, and salt.

  4. Pour the mixture over the lobster in a salad bowl, moisten with dressing, and serve.

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. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main protein and sweet flavour of the salad.
Lettuces
Form the crisp leafy base that holds the other ingredients.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add rich, creamy texture through the sieved yolks and quartered garnish.
Salad oil
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the dressing a smooth body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the eggs and oil.
Prepared mustard
Helps emulsify the dressing and adds a sharp, savoury note.

The step that matters

Mixing the lobster with the beaten yolks and oil. Beaten yolks and oil must be added gradually and whisked together so they emulsify into a smooth dressing rather than separating into greasy droplets.

Swap the radish

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Radishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, lettuce, endive, egg, cucumber, beetroot, mustard. 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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