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Sauce

Red Mayonnaise

A sauce made from lobster powder, mayonnaise, fruit juice, lemon, served with whipped cream on lettuce and pepper salad.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Red Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dry and pound the boiled lobster coral to a powder.

Make the mayonnaise

  1. Add the powdered coral to Mayonnaise No. 2.

  2. Replace vinegar with currant or strawberry juice and add lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Serve with puffs of whipped cream on bleached lettuce hearts and green pepper salad.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Lobster + lettucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together411 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled lobster coral
Provides the red colour and rich, briny flavour of the sauce.
Currant juice or strawberry juice
Replaces vinegar, adding fruity sweetness and acidity while keeping the sauce red.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright citrus flavour to the mayonnaise.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and a soft, airy texture to the serving.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, lemon, cream, lettuce, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, lemon, cream, lettuce, pepper. 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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