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Lobster Mayonnaise

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lobster Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the flesh from the lobsters and cut it into convenient pieces.

  2. Melt a layer of aspic jelly in a border mold, about ½ inch thick.

  3. When the jelly begins to set, arrange lobster pieces and tarragon leaves in it, filling gradually with more jelly.

  4. Place the mold in a cold area until the jelly is firm, then turn it out onto a dish.

  5. Fill the center with shredded lettuce mixed with remaining lobster, seasoned with pepper, salt, tarragon vinegar, and oil.

  6. Heap the lettuce and lobster high, covering with mayonnaise sauce evenly.

  7. Garnish with capers, olives, chopped herbs, slices of hard-boiled eggs, truffles, and lobster coral.

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. Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Capers + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 (lobster, pepper, tarragon, vinegar, sauce, capers, olive):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Lettucethe original
  4. Horseradishfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, pepper, tarragon, vinegar, sauce, capers, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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