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Salad

Salade De Homard {Lobster Salad}

A chilled salad of lobster, lettuce, endive, watercress, eggs, anchovies, capers, olives, and gherkins dressed with mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Endive and watercress 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 ↓

Salade De Homard {Lobster Salad}

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the lobster lengthwise and remove all the meat from the shell and claws, preserving the coral for garnish.

  2. Cut the lobster meat into neatly sized dice or slices.

  3. Trim, wash, and drain the lettuce, endive, and watercress, then break or cut them into convenient pieces.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the lobster and salad in alternate layers in a salad bowl, seasoning each layer with salt and pepper.

  2. Spread a layer of mayonnaise dressing over each layer.

  3. Cut the hard-boiled eggs into round slices and cover the surface of the salad with them.

  4. Coat the whole salad carefully with mayonnaise and decorate with remaining egg slices, olives, gherkins, capers, and anchovy fillets.

  5. Keep the bowl on ice until ready to 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 + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together45 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Watercress + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lettuce + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 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

Lobster
Provides the main sweet, firm meat that forms the body of the salad.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and moisture, binding the layers and coating the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add creamy texture and a mild richness to the salad surface.
Lettuce
Provides crisp texture and bulk as the base of the salad.

The step that matters

Keep the bowl on ice until ready to serve. Lobster meat and mayonnaise spoil quickly at warm temperatures, and cold holding keeps the dressing stable and the seafood fresh and safe.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, sauce, endive, watercress, egg, capers, olive):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Lettucethe original
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, sauce, endive, watercress, egg, capers, olive. 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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