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Homards En Rémoulade

Lobster meat mixed with mustard, parsley, salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar, served as a sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Homards En Rémoulade

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Cook the lobsters

  1. Boil the lobsters alive in salted water with pepper, vinegar, parsley, thyme, and bay leaf for about 30 minutes.

  2. Let them cool in the cooking water, then drain.

  3. Split the lobsters lengthwise and remove the meat from the body.

Make the remoulade

  1. Mash the lobster meat and mix it with mustard, chopped parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Combine with oil and vinegar, then serve the sauce in a sauceboat.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 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

Lobsters
Provide the main meat, which is the body of the dish.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the dressing.
Oil
Adds richness and body to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Let the lobsters cool in the cooking water, then drain. Cooling slowly in the cooking water lets the meat relax and stay moist rather than tightening and drying. Draining afterward keeps excess water from thinning the sauce.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

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