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Salad

Lobster, or Chingree, or Cray-fish Salad

A salad of lobster or crayfish with hard‑boiled eggs, mustard dressing, and salad greens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lobster, or Chingree, or Cray-fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

  1. Boil the eggs hard, then cool completely and remove the yolks.

  2. Mash the yolks with a fork, then mix in mustard, salt, white pepper, and red pepper.

  3. Add vinegar and lemon pickle to the yolk mixture and stir until smooth.

  4. Incorporate the fish spawn and cream into the mixture.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut the lobster meat into bits and stir it into the sauce along with the minced onion.

  2. Prepare a bed of lettuce and other salad greens, then place the lobster mixture on top.

  3. Garnish with the sliced whites of the 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed yolks form the creamy base that gives the dressing its body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the rich cream and yolks.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, moist texture to the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps emulsify the yolk mixture.
Lobster meat
Provides the main flavor and the substantial, tender bite of the salad.

The step that matters

Mash the yolks and stir the sauce until smooth. Yolks mashed thoroughly with the acid and mustard form a smooth emulsion; lumps left in the yolks or an uneven mix will make the dressing grainy and uneven.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mustard, pepper, vinegar, lemon, cream, meat):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, pepper, vinegar, lemon, cream, meat. 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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