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Lobster Salad

A chilled salad of cooked lobster, celery, egg whites, and dressings served on lettuce leaves.

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

  1. Combine the lobster and chopped celery in a dish.

  2. Simmer the eggs for 20 minutes, then chill in cold water, peel, and separate the yolks from the whites.

  3. Cut the egg whites into small pieces and add them to the lobster and celery mixture.

Marinate and dress

  1. Marinate the mixture in French dressing for 1 hour in a cool place.

  2. Drain the French dressing and add enough salad dressing to achieve the desired consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve a spoonful of the salad on each crisp lettuce leaf and sprinkle with riced egg yolks.

  2. Serve cold.

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Lobster + celerytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together251 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Lobster + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Egg + lettucetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the salad.
Hard-cooked eggs
Add structure and richness, with the yolks giving a creamy, crumbly garnish.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch to the mixture.
Salad dressing
Adds moisture and binds the mixture to the desired consistency.

The step that matters

Marinate in French dressing. Marinating for the full hour in a cool place lets the dressing season the lobster and celery evenly. Draining before adding salad dressing keeps the final mixture from becoming thin and watery.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, egg, lettuce. 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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