Why it works: Lobster and roe work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓
Lobster Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Remove the meat from the claws and body of the lobster and cut it into small pieces.
Mix the lobster meat with lettuce or endive.
Separate the soft part of the lobster and the roe, then blend them with the salad ingredients.
If desired, add a little chili or tarragon vinegar for extra flavor.
For variation, you can use crab or shrimp, and add pieces of calf's foot jelly for improvement.
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.
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Lobster + roetop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
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Lettuce + vinegartop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,370 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together909 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Lobster + lettucetop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together411 recipes
Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
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Meat + lettucetop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together579 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the lettuce
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, lobster, roe, vinegar):
- Mustardfits better
- Cucumberfits better
- Shallotfits about as well
- Lettucethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, roe, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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