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Salad

Lobster Salad

A salad of lobster, lettuce, watercress, endive, hard boiled eggs, anchovies, capers, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

  1. Split the lobster lengthwise and remove all the meat from the shell and claws, then cut it into neat dice.

  2. Trim, wash, and drain the salad greens, then break them into pieces.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the salad at the bottom of a bowl, then alternate layers of lobster and salad.

  2. Season each layer with tarragon vinegar, salt, and pepper.

  3. Pour a layer of mayonnaise sauce over all, then decorate with anchovies, capers, and quartered hard boiled eggs.

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. 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 protein and sweet, delicate flesh that forms the body of the salad.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds fat and creamy moisture that coats the lobster and greens.
Hard boiled eggs
Add rich, firm texture and mild creaminess to the salad.
Anchovies
Contribute salty, savory depth that sharpens the flavor of the dressed salad.
Lettuce
Provides crisp, watery texture and a fresh base for the layers.

The step that matters

Drain the salad greens thoroughly. Excess water on washed greens dilutes the mayonnaise sauce and makes the salad soggy, so the greens should be fully drained before layering.

“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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