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Another Way to Make Lobster Salad

A salad of boiled eggs, mustard dressing, cream, lobster meat, lettuce, radishes, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 27,047 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Another Way to Make Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs hard.

  2. When cold, remove the whites carefully.

Make the dressing

  1. Mash the yolks with mustard, salt, white pepper, and cayenne until well mixed.

  2. Add vinegar and lemon pickle to achieve a soft pulp.

  3. Incorporate cream and lobster spawn into the mixture, stirring well.

Assemble the salad

  1. Cut the lobster claws and tail into bits.

  2. Mix the lobster bits into the sauce.

  3. Chop the lettuce and radishes.

  4. Mince the onion.

  5. Serve the salad on top of the dressed lobster and garnish with the egg whites.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Cream + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,050 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks are mashed to form the creamy base of the dressing, and whites are used as garnish.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the richness of the cream and yolks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and cuts through its richness.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the dressing a smooth, rich texture.
Lobster spawn
Adds rich, savoury flavour and colour to the dressing.
Lobster claws and tail
Provide the main meat, giving the salad its substance and sweet flavour.

The step that matters

Mashing the yolks into a soft pulp. Yolks must be mashed thoroughly with the seasonings and vinegar before the cream is added. Lumps left in the yolk mixture will not smooth out later, and the dressing will have a grainy texture rather than a uniform, creamy one.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  2. Capersbetter flavor fit
  3. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, pepper, vinegar, lemon, cream, lobster. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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