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Mayonnaise De Homard

A chilled lobster salad with mayonnaise and tarragon.

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 and dressing

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

  2. Make mayonnaise or mustard dressing, adding the yolk of an egg to the latter.

  3. Mix in all the fat from the lobster, rubbing to a smooth paste.

  4. Add tarragon or Maille vinegar, ensuring the sauce doesn't thin too much.

Assemble and serve

  1. Separate the leaves of the crisped lettuce.

  2. Fill each curled leaf with about 2 tablespoons of the lobster mixture.

  3. Arrange on a flat dish and 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
Provides the main body and flavour of the filling, as the bulk of the dish.
Mayonnaise or mustard dressing
Adds moisture and richness, and binds the diced lobster into a spreadable filling.
Lettuce
Crisp leaves act as edible cups that hold the filling and add a cool, crunchy contrast.
Tarragon or maille vinegar
Adds acidity and sharpness that balance the richness of the dressing and the lobster fat.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce thick when adding the vinegar. Acid can thin an emulsified sauce and make it run. A sauce that is too thin will slide off the lettuce and lose its body, so add the vinegar with care and check the texture.

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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