Name: Homards a LA Remoulade
Ingredients: 2 lobsters; 1 tablespoon fine mustard; 1 tablespoon chopped shallots; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; ½ cup oil; ⅓ cup vinegar; coarse sea salt; black pepper

Why it works: Mustard and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Homards a LA Remoulade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

Cook the lobsters like crayfish, ensuring they are fresh.
Cut the lobsters from head to tail and remove the insides.

Make the sauce and serve

In a bowl, mix the mustard, shallots, parsley, oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.
Blend well and serve the sauce with the lobster.

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.

Mustard + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together859 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,588 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobsters: Provide the main cooked meat that the sauce accompanies.
Fine mustard: Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the oil and vinegar into the sauce.
Oil: Gives the sauce its rich body and smooth texture.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Blend well. Mustard helps oil and vinegar form a stable emulsion. Blending thoroughly keeps the sauce smooth and prevents it from separating.

Swap the parsley

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

Tarragonfits better
Capersfits better
Parsleythe original
Thymefits about as well

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