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Lobster Salad

A salad of lettuce, endive, small greens, beetroot, cucumber, hard‑boiled eggs, lobster, and a vinaigrette 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 greens

  1. Wash the salad greens.

  2. Dry the salad greens by shaking them in a cloth.

  3. Cut the lettuces.

  4. Cut the endive.

Dress the salad

  1. Pour the dressing over the lettuces and endive.

  2. Add the small salad greens.

  3. Mix the small salad greens with the lobster meat picked from the shell.

  4. Cut the lobster meat into small square pieces.

  5. Add half of the lobster pieces to the salad.

  6. Reserve the other half of the lobster pieces for garnish.

Prepare the eggs

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

  2. Chop the egg whites finely.

  3. Rub the egg yolks through a sieve.

Arrange and garnish

  1. Arrange the salad on a glass dish.

  2. Garnish with sliced cucumber.

  3. Garnish with lobster pieces.

  4. Garnish with egg yolks.

  5. Garnish with egg whites.

  6. Garnish with coral.

  7. Garnish with beetroot in alternating small bunches for 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 forms the body of the salad.
Lettuces
Supply the crisp, cool base that gives the salad its main texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a soft, mild richness that balances the lobster and dressing.
Egg yolks
Help bind the dressing by emulsifying the oil, giving it a smooth body.
Oil
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the dressing a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and cuts the richness of the oil and eggs.

The step that matters

Rub the egg yolks through a sieve. Cooked yolks are crumbly, so pressing them through a fine sieve breaks them into a fine, even powder. Forcing them too hard or leaving lumps gives a gritty garnish, so press gently and steadily.

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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