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Savoury Cream

A chilled lobster cream made with mayonnaise, cream, gelatine, aspic, tomato juice, and garnished with parsley and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,483 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Savoury Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the gills from the lobster and chop it into pieces.

  2. Mix the mayonnaise with the lobster pieces.

Make the cream mixture

  1. Soften the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Dissolve the softened gelatine in warm water.

  3. Combine the cream, gelatine, aspic, and tomato juice in a bowl.

Set and serve

  1. Decorate a border mould with parsley and lobster.

  2. Fill the decorated mould with the mixture.

  3. Refrigerate until set.

  4. Turn out the mould when cold.

  5. Fill the center with lettuce dipped in mayonnaise.

  6. Garnish the center with aspic.

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 + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  2. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  5. Lobster + lettucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together411 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main flavour and the chunky meaty texture of the set cream.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid cream mixture so it holds its shape when turned out of the mould.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, soft texture to the set mould.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and richness that moistens the lobster and adds a creamy flavour.
Tomato juice
Adds acidity and a light savoury flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Dissolve the softened gelatine in warm water. Gelatine must be fully dissolved before mixing, since lumps or undissolved granules will not set evenly. Overheating can weaken its setting power, so warm water rather than boiling is used.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, cream, parsley, lettuce):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, cream, parsley, lettuce. 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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