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Lobster Salad

A chilled salad of diced lobster, lettuce, French dressing, mayonnaise, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Cut the lobster meat into dice and season with French dressing.

  2. Keep the seasoned lobster on ice until ready to serve.

Assemble

  1. Make a nest with the head lettuce leaves.

  2. Break the poorer lettuce leaves and mix them with the lobster.

  3. Place a large spoonful of the lobster mixture in each lettuce leaf and top with a tablespoon of mayonnaise.

  4. Garnish with capers over the dressing.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

  3. Lobster + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together102 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Meat + lettucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the main body of the salad and supplies the savoury, meaty flavour.
French dressing
Seasons the diced lobster and adds moisture and acidity.
Head lettuce leaves
Provide a crisp, cool base that holds the lobster mixture.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and a creamy texture over the lobster.

The step that matters

Keep the seasoned lobster on ice until ready to serve. Lobster is a delicate seafood that spoils quickly at warm temperatures. Keeping it chilled slows bacterial growth and keeps the texture firm and fresh rather than soft and watery.

“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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