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Mayonnaise of Lobster

A chilled lobster dish mixed with mayonnaise, lettuce, and garnished with olives, gherkins, capers, and beetroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Mayonnaise of Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Cut the lobster lengthwise and remove all the meat.

  2. Chop the coral finely and reserve it for garnish.

  3. Break the claws and extract the meat intact if possible.

  4. Cut the remaining meat into neat pieces.

Make the salad

  1. Wash and trim the lettuce, then tear the leaves into convenient pieces.

  2. In a bowl, combine the lobster meat and lettuce.

  3. Add enough mayonnaise sauce to season and mix gently.

  4. Shape the mixture into a dome on a round dish and cover it with stiff mayonnaise sauce.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with claw pieces, quarters of hard-boiled egg, strips of anchovy, capers, beetroot, chopped coral, stoned olives, and gherkin slices as desired.

  2. Keep on ice until ready to serve.

  3. Serve as cool as possible.

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 + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Capers + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Capers + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Lobster
Provides the main body of meat, with its sweet flavour and tender texture.
Mayonnaise sauce
Binds the salad and adds richness and moisture, and coats the dome.
Lettuce
Adds crisp texture and bulk, lightly holding the lobster together.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds a firm, creamy texture and mild richness to the garnish.

The step that matters

Keep on ice until ready to serve. Lobster meat and mayonnaise spoil quickly at warm temperatures, and cold also keeps the mayonnaise emulsion firm and the salad crisp.

Swap the beetroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, egg, olive, capers, lettuce, sauce):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Beetrootthe original
  4. Welsh onionfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, egg, olive, capers, lettuce, sauce. 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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