Skip to main content

Mayonnaise a LA Gouffe

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Olive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Mayonnaise a LA Gouffe

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place an oval or round cylinder mold on ice.

  2. Pour a small amount of well-made liquid aspic jelly into the mold.

  3. Once nearly set, add alternating layers of small balls of green butter and prawn butter.

  4. Cover with more jelly and repeat the layering process until the mold is packed.

  5. Ice the butter balls before adding them to the mold for a checkered effect.

  6. Leave the mold in ice to consolidate thoroughly.

  7. When ready to serve, turn out the mold and garnish with additional butter balls, olives, anchovy strips, and hard-boiled egg yolks.

  8. Fill the hollow center with the fish or fowl used in the mayonnaise.

  9. Crown the center with lettuce leaves and arrange whole boiled prawns around the dish.

  10. Keep the jelly and sauce in the ice-box until just before serving, then pour the sauce over the contents.

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. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  2. Olive + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together880 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  3. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Anchovy + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together185 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, olive, anchovy, egg):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, olive, anchovy, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

Creamy Lettuce SoupCreamy Lettuce Soup8 recipesLettuce SoupLettuce Soup8 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes