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Lobster Salad

A salad of boiled lobster, butter, Madeira wine, truffles, egg yolks, and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Split the lobsters and remove the meat from the shells.

  2. Cut the lobster meat into one-inch lengths.

Cook the lobster and truffles

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the lobster meat, salt, red pepper, and truffles; cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour in the Madeira wine and reduce by half, about 3 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with the sweet cream.

  2. Add the lobster mixture to the egg and cream, and stir gently for 2 minutes until thickened.

  3. Pour into a hot tureen and serve immediately.

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. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Truffle + madeira winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together195 recipes
  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobsters
Provides the main meat, which is the body of the salad.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture as they gently set with the warm lobster.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the set of the egg yolks.
Madeira wine
Reduced to concentrate its flavour, adding sweetness and depth.
Truffles
Add a strong, earthy aroma that perfumes the warm butter and lobster.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and gives the lobster a rich, smooth fat base.

The step that matters

Stir gently while the egg and cream thicken. Egg yolks set at moderate heat and can scramble if overheated or stirred too hard, leaving a grainy rather than smooth, thickened sauce.

“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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