Skip to main content
Drink

French Mayonnaise

A mayonnaise-based dish with lobster, fish, and salad, seasoned with cayenne pepper and anchovy.

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

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

French Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Prepare the mayonnaise and season it with cayenne pepper and anchovy essence or anchovy butter to taste.

  2. Color the mayonnaise with lobster coral.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange alternate slices of lobster and cold fish on a serving dish.

  2. Create a border with the fish and fill the center with young fresh salad.

  3. Sauce the salad just before serving and garnish with parsley or foliage.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Anchovy + turbottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together110 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Anchovy + lobstertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Lobster + turbottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Anchovy + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,702 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise
Provides richness and a creamy coating that carries the seasoning over the salad and seafood.
Lobster coral
Adds a rich pink-orange color to the mayonnaise without changing its flavor much.
Cold lobster
Forms the main shellfish layer, giving the dish its sweet, delicate seafood flavor.
Cold turbot or large soles
Supplies the white fish layer, contributing mild flavor and a tender, flaky texture when chilled.

The step that matters

Sauce the salad just before serving. Mayonnaise is an emulsion that thins and weeps liquid once it contacts greens. Dressing the salad at the last moment keeps the leaves crisp and the sauce thick.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, anchovy, lobster, turbot):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Celeryfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, anchovy, lobster, turbot. 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.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes