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Lobster Salad

A chilled salad of boiled lobster, celery, mayonnaise, and seasonings, served on lettuce leaves and garnished with eggs and lobster claws.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Crack the shell of the lobster and remove all the meat.

  2. Cut the lobster meat into 1½-inch bits.

  3. Chill the lobster meat on ice.

Make the salad

  1. Mix the lobster meat with an equal amount of chopped celery.

  2. Sprinkle lightly with coarse sea salt and paprika or cayenne.

  3. Combine with rich mayonnaise.

  4. Place the mixture in a bowl lined with lettuce leaves.

  5. Pour additional mayonnaise over the salad.

Garnish

  1. Garnish with hard-boiled eggs cut into quarters and boiled lobster claws.

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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Lobster + lettucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together411 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Lobster + celerytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together251 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Lobster + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Lettuce + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Provides the main texture and flavor of the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture that contrasts with the tender lobster.
Rich mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, binding the salad and keeping it creamy.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a soft, creamy contrast and richness as a garnish.

The step that matters

Chill the lobster meat on ice. Cold lobster stays firm and holds its texture, and it keeps the mayonnaise from warming and loosening when combined. Cooling it well before mixing helps the salad stay fresh and creamy.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, lettuce, egg. 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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