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Salad

Lobster Salad

A salad of boiled lobster and eggs dressed with oil, vinegar, mustard, pepper, salt, and celery or lettuce.

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

Prepare

  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.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix in the minced lobster and add celery or lettuce as desired.

  2. 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 flavor of the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs
Mashed to form the creamy base that binds the salad.
Sweet oil or softened butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the mixture a smooth, moist texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and cuts the richness of the fat.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that contrasts with the sweet lobster.

The step that matters

Mixing the oil or butter into the mashed eggs. Fat must be fully blended into the mashed yolks to form a smooth emulsion-like base. If it is added in clumps or the eggs are left lumpy, the dressing will look greasy and separate rather than coat the lobster evenly.

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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