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Lobster Salad

A salad of lobster, lettuce, endive, hard‑boiled eggs, mayonnaise dressing, and optional aspic jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

  1. Remove the flesh from the lobster and cut it into pieces.

  2. Wash and dry the lettuce, then chop it.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the chopped lettuce with the lobster and mayonnaise dressing.

  2. Place a border of chopped aspic on a dish and heap the salad in the middle.

  3. Decorate the salad with pieces of endive and quartered hard-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. Lettuce + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Lobster + endivetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Lobster + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Endive + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main flesh and rich, sweet savour of the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture, binding the lettuce and lobster together.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp, leafy body that the salad is heaped from.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add soft, firm texture and mild richness to the garnish.
Aspic jelly
Sets into a firm, clear border that holds the heaped salad in shape.

The step that matters

Drying the lettuce before mixing. Any water left on washed lettuce thins the mayonnaise dressing and makes the salad soggy and watery, so the leaves should be dried thoroughly before chopping and combining.

Swap the endive

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

  1. Endivethe original
  2. Beetrootfits about as well
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits less well

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

More lobster salad recipes

Dressing 7Cold 3 See all 290 →

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