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With Mayonnaise

Lobster boiled and served with a mayonnaise sauce made from olive oil, lemon juice, egg yolks, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

With Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the lobsters

  1. Boil plenty of salted water in a deep vessel.

  2. Plug the claws and fold the tail inward over the belly of the lobsters.

  3. Dip the lobsters into the boiling water and cook for 20 to 25 minutes.

Serve

  1. Cut the lobsters in half or remove the meat from the shells.

  2. Serve on lettuce.

Make the mayonnaise

  1. For the mayonnaise sauce, mix olive oil, lemon juice, hard-boiled egg yolks, and finely chopped parsley until well blended. Season to taste.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobsters
Main protein; the meat is the centre of the dish.
Eggs
Egg yolks emulsify the oil and lemon juice into a thick, stable mayonnaise.
Olive oil
Supplies fat that gives the mayonnaise its rich, smooth body.
Lemons
Lemon juice adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the fat.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma that lightens the mayonnaise.

The step that matters

Cook the lobsters for 20 to 25 minutes in boiling water. Lobster meat proteins toughen and turn rubbery when overcooked, so timing the dip in boiling water matters for tender meat.

“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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