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Lobster Salad

A salad of boiled lobster mixed with egg yolks, mustard, oil, vinegar, sugar, and spices, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 lobster

  1. Boil the lobster for about 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the coral and pound it smooth.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the coral gradually with the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs, mustard, salad oil, vinegar, powdered sugar, salt, black pepper, cayenne, and fresh egg yolks.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill a salad bowl with shredded lettuce, reserving the small curled centers for garnish.

  2. Add the lobster meat, torn or cut into bits, to the lettuce.

  3. Pour the sauce over the salad, place the lettuce hearts in the center, and arrange slices of hard-boiled eggs around the sides.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 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
Provides the main sweet, tender meat and the coral that colours and flavours the sauce.
Fresh egg yolks
Add richness and help the sauce emulsify into a smooth, thick dressing.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mash into the sauce to give body and a creamy, rich texture.
Salad oil
Supplies fat that emulsifies with the yolks to form a creamy dressing.
English mustard
Contributes sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsion of the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the fat.

The step that matters

Mix the coral gradually with the yolks and other sauce ingredients. Adding the oil and liquids slowly lets the yolks emulsify them into a stable, smooth dressing. Adding them too fast can cause the sauce to separate and turn greasy.

Swap the lettuce

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