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Lobster Salad - with Caviare Sippets

A chilled lobster salad mixed with shallot, tarragon, egg yolks, mustard, and caviar, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Lobster Salad - with Caviare Sippets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

  1. Pick all the soft parts out of the lobster and place them in a bowl.

  2. Mix in shallot, tarragon, egg yolks, sugar, mustard, salt, pepper, oil, and enough vinegar to thin the mixture.

Assemble the salad

  1. Break the firm pieces of lobster flesh into small pieces and combine with the mixture.

  2. Transfer to a serving dish, top with sliced hard-boiled eggs, and sprinkle with capers.

Make the toast and serve

  1. Toast bread slices, cut into triangles, butter them, and spread with caviar.

  2. Arrange the toast around the dish 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. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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 body of the salad, with its firm flesh giving bite and its soft parts adding richness.
Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and vinegar into a thick, smooth dressing that binds the salad.
Oil
Adds fat and silkiness, carrying flavour and giving the dressing its body.
White-wine vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich dressing and balances the sweetness.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsion of the dressing.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add soft, mild richness that contrasts with the lobster and dressing.

The step that matters

Mixing the dressing with the egg yolks and oil. Oil must be added gradually to the yolks so it emulsifies; adding it too fast causes the dressing to split and become greasy rather than thick and smooth.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, shallot, tarragon, egg, sugar, pepper, wine):

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Lettucefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, shallot, tarragon, egg, sugar, pepper, wine. 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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