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Lobster Salad

A salad of boiled lobster, hard‑boiled eggs, and a dressing of vinegar, mustard, oil, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and lettuce 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 coral

  1. Boil the lobster coral for 30 minutes.

  2. Pound and rub the lobster coral smooth.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix the hard boiled eggs with vinegar until smooth.

  2. Add mustard, salad oil, sugar, salt, black pepper, cayenne, and raw egg yolks to the egg mixture. Mix the mixture well.

  3. Combine the dressing with the lobster coral.

Serve

  1. Serve the salad on a platter with lettuce leaves in the center and sliced hard boiled eggs arranged around it.

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. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 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

Lobster coral
Provides the main flavor and a rich, smooth texture when pounded into the dressing.
Hard boiled eggs
Form the creamy base of the dressing and add body.
Raw egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil and vinegar, helping the dressing thicken and hold together.
Salad oil
Adds fat and smoothness, carrying flavor and softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of yolks and oil.
English mustard
Adds sharp heat and aids emulsification of the dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the raw egg yolks. Raw yolks are the emulsifier that binds the oil and vinegar into a stable dressing. If the oil is added too quickly or the mixture is not mixed well, the dressing can split and look greasy rather than smooth.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

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