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Salad

Fish Salad

A salad of lobster, hard‑boiled eggs, cucumber, capers, anchovy fillets, dressed with salt, pepper, vinegar, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Endive and capers share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 32 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Fill a bowl halfway with salad herbs.

  2. Break the lobster in half and extract the meat in one piece.

  3. Cut the lobster meat into small slices, about ¼ inch thick, and arrange on the salad.

Dress and serve

  1. Remove the soft part from the lobster belly and mix it with salt, pepper, vinegar, and oil in a bowl.

  2. Stir well and pour the mixture over the salad.

  3. Top with sliced hard-boiled eggs, cucumber, capers, and anchovy fillets.

  4. Stir lightly 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. Endive + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together32 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Endive + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together87 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Capers + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main meaty protein and the sweet flavour at the centre of the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add soft, creamy richness and body to the salad.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Oil
Carries fat-soluble flavour and gives the dressing a smooth, coating texture.
Anchovy fillets
Contribute a salty, savoury depth that boosts the overall flavour.

The step that matters

Dress the salad just before serving. Vinegar and salt draw moisture from the leaves, so the herbs wilt and turn limp if the dressing sits too long. Stirring lightly keeps the leaves crisp and the lobster slices intact.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against endive, lobster, egg, capers, anchovy, pepper, vinegar. 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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