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Lobster Salad

A salad of lettuce, endive, seasonal greens, beetroot, cucumber, hard‑boiled eggs, lobster, and a dressing of oil, vinegar, mustard, anchovy sauce, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and endive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Wash the salad and dry it by shaking in a cloth.

  2. Cut up the lettuces and endive.

Dress and mix

  1. Pour the dressing over them and lightly mix in the small salad.

  2. Blend all well with the lobster meat.

  3. Pick the meat from the claws, cut it into square pieces, and add half to the salad, reserving the other half for garnishing.

Prepare the garnish and serve

  1. Separate the yolks from the whites of the hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Chop the whites finely.

  3. Rub the yolks through a sieve.

  4. Arrange the salad on a glass dish, garnishing with sliced cucumber, lobster pieces, egg yolks, egg whites, coral, and beetroot in alternating groups for color contrast.

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

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

  2. Lettuce + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Endive + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

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, tender meat that gives the salad its substance and flavour.
Egg yolks
Bind the dressing into a smooth, creamy emulsion and add richness.
Oil
Forms the body of the dressing, coating leaves and adding richness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the oil.
Made mustard
Helps emulsify the dressing and adds a sharp, pungent bite.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add mild, firm texture and creamy contrast as a garnish.

The step that matters

Blend the dressing with the lobster meat. Mixing the dressing into the salad gently keeps the leaves crisp and the lobster tender. Overworking it can bruise the leaves and break the emulsion, leaving the dressing oily and watery.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Horseradishfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, lettuce, endive, beetroot, egg, vinegar, mustard. 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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