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Lobster Salad

A chilled salad of boiled lobster, hard‑boiled eggs, and seasoned dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Lobster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mince the inside of the lobster finely.

  2. Mash the hard-boiled eggs in a bowl.

  3. Add the sweet oil or softened butter to the eggs and mix well.

  4. Season with pepper, salt, vinegar, and mustard to taste.

  5. Incorporate the minced lobster and mix thoroughly.

  6. Add celery or crisp lettuce to taste.

  7. Garnish with sliced hard-boiled eggs 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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Lobster
Provides the main meat and flavour of the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs
Mashed into a base that gives the salad body and richness.
Sweet oil or softened butter
Adds fat and moisture, making the mixture smooth and rich.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the richness of the fat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the richness.

The step that matters

Mixing the minced lobster into the egg and fat base. The lobster should be finely minced and the mixture mixed thoroughly so the fat and egg coat the pieces evenly. Uneven mixing leaves dry pockets of lobster and greasy patches, so the salad tastes unbalanced and has an inconsistent texture.

Swap the celery

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

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

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