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Salad, Lobster

A chilled salad of lobster, hard‑boiled egg, lettuce, watercress, parsley, aspic, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salad, Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Split the lobster lengthwise and remove the meat from the shell and claws.

Set the aspic mold

  1. Rinse a border mold with cold water and pour in a little liquid aspic; allow it to set.

  2. Decorate the bottom of the mold with claw meat and chopped parsley, then pour over more aspic and let it set.

  3. Fill the mold with the remaining lobster and aspic.

Serve

  1. Once cold, turn out the salad onto a bed of lettuce.

  2. Mix the remaining lobster and hard-boiled egg with mayonnaise sauce and place in the center.

  3. Garnish with chopped aspic and watercress.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + watercresstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  4. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main meat, which is the centre of the salad's flavour and texture.
Aspic jelly
Sets into a clear gel that holds the salad together and gives it a smooth, cool texture.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds fat and creaminess that moistens the lobster and egg in the centre.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds a soft, rich texture and body to the mayonnaise filling.

The step that matters

Letting each aspic layer set before adding the next. Aspic is a gelatin-based liquid that sets only when cold. If a layer is poured before the one beneath is firm, the layers mix, the decoration shifts, and the mold will not hold its shape when turned out.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Nutmegfits less well

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