Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Salad

A salad of shredded lobster meat with celery, dressed in cream dressing and garnished with lettuce or celery leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare

  1. Cook the lobsters and remove the meat, shredding it into bite-sized pieces.

  2. Chop the celery and combine it with the lobster meat.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, add the cream dressing to the mixture.

  2. Garnish with lettuce or celery leaves.

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

Lobster
Provides the main protein and sweet, delicate flesh that forms the body of the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and fresh, slightly sharp crunch that contrasts with the soft lobster.
Cream dressing
Adds richness and moisture that coats the lobster and celery pieces.

The step that matters

Adding the cream dressing just before serving. Dressing added too early lets the liquid draw moisture out of the celery and soften it, and can thin the dressing, so the salad loses its crunch and looks watery.

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.

More lobster salad recipes

Dressing 7Cold 3 See all 290 →

You might also like

Lobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipes