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Lobster Salad

A salad of lettuce, dry lobster, hard‑boiled eggs, vegetables, and a mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and endive share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 45 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Wash each lettuce leaf separately and dry with a clean cloth.

  2. Arrange a bed of lettuce in the center of a glass dish.

  3. Pile the contents of the tin of dry lobster on top of the lettuce.

  4. Place the lettuce hearts around the lobster for contrast.

  5. Make an outer fringe with well-washed watercress.

  6. Fill in with quartered hard-boiled eggs, beetroot slices, cucumber slices, endive, small salad, sorrel leaves, chopped capsicums, and tomato slices.

Dress and serve

  1. Just before serving, pour over the salad half a pint of mayonnaise made with egg yolks, oil, vinegar, dry mustard, and salt.

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. Watercress + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together45 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  4. Beetroot + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Watercress + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and vinegar into a thick, smooth mayonnaise dressing.
Oil
Forms the body of the mayonnaise, adding richness and a silky texture.
Dry mustard
Helps stabilise the mayonnaise emulsion and adds a sharp, savoury bite.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the rich oil.
Lettuce
Provides a crisp, cool base that holds the other salad ingredients.

The step that matters

Dressing the salad just before serving. Mayonnaise is an emulsion that can thin or separate over time, and acidic dressing wilts lettuce and watercress. Adding it at the last moment keeps the leaves crisp and the dressing thick.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, lobster, watercress, egg, beetroot, endive, 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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