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Salad

Lobster Salad

A salad of lobster meat and lettuce dressed with a vinaigrette of egg yolk, oil, mustard, vinegar, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster and lettuce

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster in large pieces, saving the coral separately.

  2. Chop the lettuce slightly and place it on a dish.

  3. Arrange the lobster meat on top of the lettuce and place the coral around the outside.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks, then slowly add the salad oil while continuously beating.

  2. Add salt, Cayenne pepper, mixed mustard, and vinegar to the dressing and mix well.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the lobster just before serving.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the salad oil and vinegar into a thick, creamy dressing.
Salad oil
Provides fat and richness, forming the body of the dressing with the yolks.
Lobster
Main protein, providing sweet, delicate meat as the centrepiece of the salad.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp base that holds the lobster and dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich dressing and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil to the yolks. The oil must be added slowly while beating continuously. Adding it too fast prevents the yolk from emulsifying, so the dressing separates instead of becoming thick and creamy.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, egg, pepper, mustard, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucethe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, egg, pepper, mustard, vinegar. 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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