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Lobster Salad

A salad of chopped lobster, hard-boiled eggs, and lettuce dressed with vinegar, sugar, oil, mustard, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the whites of the hard-boiled eggs, lobster, and lettuce into small pieces.

  2. In a bowl, combine the vinegar, sugar, salad oil, pepper, mustard, and salt.

  3. Heat the mixture until scalding hot.

  4. Stir in the yolks of the eggs that have been rubbed to a fine paste.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Lobster + mustardtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs
Whites add chopped bulk; yolks, rubbed smooth, thicken and enrich the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that defines the dressing's flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Salad oil
Adds fat and a smoother, richer mouthfeel to the dressing.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps hold the oil and vinegar together in the dressing.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks after heating. The mixture is scalding hot, so the yolks can scramble or turn grainy if added too quickly. Rubbing them to a fine paste first lets them blend in smoothly and thicken the dressing evenly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cucumberfits less well
  4. Horseradishfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, egg, vinegar, sugar, pepper. 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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