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Mayonnaise De Homard

A chilled lobster salad with mayonnaise or mustard dressing, seasoned with tarragon or vinegar, served in lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mayonnaise De Homard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Cut the lobster meat into ½ inch dice and place it in a bowl on ice.

  2. Make Mayonnaise or Mustard Dressing.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the yolk of an egg to the mustard dressing. Mix in all the fat from the lobster. Rub it to a smooth paste.

  2. Add tarragon or Maille vinegar. Ensure the sauce doesn't thin too much.

Assemble and serve

  1. Separate the leaves of the crisped lettuce.

  2. Fill each curled lettuce leaf with about 2 tablespoons of the lobster mixture. Arrange the filled leaves on a flat dish. Serve very cold.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the main body of the dish and supplies its sweet, delicate flavor.
Egg yolk (in the method)
Emulsifies the oil and fat into a stable, thick sauce.
Mayonnaise or mustard dressing
Coats the lobster and gives it a creamy, rich texture.
Tarragon or maille vinegar
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich sauce.
Crisped lettuce
Provides a cool, crisp base that contrasts with the creamy filling.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce from thinning too much. Mayonnaise-style sauces are emulsions of oil droplets held in egg yolk. If they become too warm or are overworked, the emulsion can break and the sauce turns loose and oily, so keeping everything cold and checking the consistency matters.

Swap the tarragon

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonthe original
  3. Celeryfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, lettuce, mustard. 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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