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Lobster Sandwiches

A sandwich made with finely chopped lobster, seasoned with salt, cayenne, lemon or vinegar, olive oil, and mayonnaise, topped with watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lobster Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the lobster meat very fine.

  2. Season with salt, cayenne, lemon juice or vinegar, and olive oil.

  3. Add enough mayonnaise dressing to moisten the mixture.

Assemble the sandwiches

  1. Cut the bread into thin slices or desired shapes.

  2. Spread butter on each slice.

  3. Spread the lobster mixture on the buttered slices.

  4. Top with a layer of watercress leaves.

  5. Place another buttered slice on top and arrange on a dish.

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. Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Olive + watercresstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together684 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Provides the main filling and its sweet, delicate flavor.
Mayonnaise dressing
Moistens the chopped lobster so the filling spreads and holds together.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness to the seasoned lobster filling.
Day-old loaf of bread
Forms the sandwich structure; slightly stale bread slices more cleanly and holds its shape.
Butter
Spread on the bread to add richness and keep the filling from soaking into the slices.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the lobster.

The step that matters

Add enough mayonnaise dressing to moisten the mixture. Too little dressing leaves the lobster dry and crumbly, while too much makes the filling runny and soaks the bread. Add it gradually until the mixture just holds together.

“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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