Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Salad

A chilled salad of lobster, hard‑boiled eggs, mixed greens, and a vinaigrette of oil, mustard, anchovy sauce, vinegar, cayenne, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 lobster and greens

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster body and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Mix the salad greens with half of the lobster meat.

Make the garnish

  1. Mince the egg whites finely and rub the yolks through a sieve.

  2. Combine the yolks with the lobster coral.

Dress and serve

  1. For the dressing, mix the salad oil, mustard, anchovy sauce, vinegar, cayenne, and salt until creamy.

  2. Place the mixture on a glass dish and garnish with the remaining salad greens.

  3. If desired, add a few prawns for garnish.

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

Eggs
Egg yolks add richness and body to the garnish and help bind the dressing.
Salad oil
Provides fat that carries flavour and gives the dressing a creamy texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Mustard
Acts as an emulsifier, helping the oil and vinegar hold together as a creamy dressing.

The step that matters

Mix the dressing until creamy. Oil and vinegar separate unless they are whisked well, and mustard helps them emulsify. Adding the oil gradually while mixing keeps the dressing smooth rather than greasy and split.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, egg, lettuce, endive, beetroot, mustard, anchovy. 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 →

You might also like

Lobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesCreamy Lettuce SoupCreamy Lettuce Soup8 recipesLettuce SoupLettuce Soup8 recipes