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Lobster Salad

A salad of boiled lobster meat, celery, lettuce, and French dressing.

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

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 remove it in one piece.

  4. Separate tail meat and remove the intestinal vein.

  5. Remove body meat, leaving the stomach in the shell, and save the coral and liver.

  6. Disjoint claws and remove meat.

  7. Break hard shells carefully.

  8. Cut lobster meat into ½ inch cubes.

Make the salad

  1. Marinate the cubes with French Dressing.

  2. Mix in celery.

  3. Combine with Mayonnaise or Cream Dressing.

Serve

  1. Arrange shell and claws on a bed of lettuce.

  2. Fill the shell with the salad.

  3. Rub coral through a strainer.

  4. Sprinkle coral over 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
Provides the main meat of the salad, cooked by boiling until the flesh turns firm and opaque.
Celery
Adds crisp texture that contrasts with the soft lobster meat.
Mayonnaise or cream dressing
Adds fat and moisture, binding the salad and keeping the lobster meat tender.
Coral
Adds rich, concentrated flavour and a bright colour to the finished salad.

The step that matters

Boil lobsters in rapidly boiling water for 20 to 30 minutes, then place in cold water.. Lobster overcooks quickly, and the meat becomes tough and rubbery. Plunging the lobsters into cold water right after cooking stops the cooking so the meat stays tender and easy to remove from the shell.

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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Dressing 7Cold 3 See all 290 →

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