Mayonnaise de Homard

Mayonnaise de Homard (lobster salad with mayonnaise) teaches a rule that looks small and decides everything: season the lettuce before the mayonnaise arrives. The sauce is meant to cloak the lobster, not do every job at once. Put the leaves down plain and the salad tastes rich above, vacant below.

The old cold kitchen assumed cooked lobster remains at hand, a saucier's bowl of mayonnaise ready for service, and platters built for a crowd. Here, one whole cooked lobster gives you claw and knuckle meat for the middle, tail medallions for the crown, and one yolk makes precisely the quantity of mayonnaise four people need. The elaborate buffet pattern was brigade scaffolding and can go; the sequence of seasoned ciselé lettuce, lobster, sliced tail, and mayonnaise is the dish and must stay. One cook, one stove, one evening.

Anchovy, capers, olives, egg, radish, and lettuce hearts are a vocabulary, not a diagram. Choose the balance that pleases you and arrange it with a generous hand. Before you touch the lobster, dry the lettuce completely and remember the one step that matters: dress those leaves lightly, but dress them first.