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Lobster Salad

A salad of boiled lobster meat, celery, lettuce, and French dressing, finished with mayonnaise and lobster coral.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and prepare the lobster

  1. Boil lobsters in rapidly boiling water for 20 to 30 minutes, then place in cold water.

  2. Remove claws and tail from the body.

  3. Loosen tail meat and cut through the membrane with scissors to extract it.

  4. Remove the intestinal vein from the tail meat.

  5. Separate body meat from the shell, discarding the gills and stomach.

  6. Disjoin claws and extract meat carefully.

  7. Cut lobster meat into 4‑inch cubes and marinate with French Dressing.

Make the salad

  1. Just before serving, mix in celery and combine with Mayonnaise or Cream Dressing.

  2. Rub coral through a strainer and sprinkle over the salad.

Serve

  1. Arrange lobster shell and claws on a bed of lettuce and fill the shell with the salad.

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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Lobster + celerytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together251 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobsters
Provide the main body of meat, whose texture depends on gentle cooking.
French dressing
Flavours the lobster meat while it marinates, adding acidity and seasoning.
Celery
Adds a crisp, crunchy contrast to the soft lobster meat.
Mayonnaise or cream dressing
Adds moisture and richness, binding the salad together.
Coral
Adds rich flavour and a bright colour to the finished salad.

The step that matters

Boil the lobsters for the stated time only. Overcooking makes lobster protein tight and rubbery, so timing the boil and then chilling in cold water helps keep the meat tender.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Lettucethe original
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, celery, cream. 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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