The Sweet Flavor You've Never Thought To Pair With Lobster

The next time you get bibbed up, cracker in hand, ready to dive into a butterflied lobster tail, try to resist dunking the meat into clarified butter straight away. Consider, instead, of pairing your crustacean with a more aromatic accompaniment. Lobster is far and away one of the least fishy-flavored crustaceans, possessing instead a slightly briny and surprisingly sweet taste, making it suitable for pairing with flavors both savory and sweet. While you might expect to see this signature shellfish served with a tomato-based cocktail sauce, tangy Vietnamese nước chấm, or even passion fruit butter, vanilla might be one flavor pairing you didn't anticipate.

In Comoros, an Indian Ocean archipelago off of the east coast of Africa, their national (and most famous) dish is langouste à la vanille or lobster in a vanilla sauce. After the African lobsters (also known as rock lobsters) are roasted, the meat is served over wilted spinach in a French beurre blanc infused with a split vanilla bean pod. The vanilla seeds impart rich floral notes to the buttery, white wine sauce, and complements the slightly sweet lobster. Though it's paired with lobster in Comoros, the sauce would be equally delicious with seared scallops, shrimp, or even salmon.

The African archipelago was first colonized by France in the mid-1800s, which is why it wouldn't be unusual to see French influences in Comorian cuisine. Comoros is also known for cultivating and exporting high quality vanilla. It's a key part of the "vanilla islands," a 2010 marketing term created to encourage tourism, one which includes other vanilla producers in the Indian Ocean, including Madagascar, Mauritius, Réunion, Seychelles, and Mayotte. With these influences in mind, it would be more surprising if the cuisine didn't include savory vanilla-enhanced dishes.

While we're all too familiar with using vanilla in sweets, from baked goods to ice cream, its floral and sometimes spicy notes are surprisingly well-suited to savory situations. Go ahead and add it to a buttery beurre blanc and drape it over lobster (or scallops), to help underline the seafood's natural sweetness. But also feel free to go wild, using the power of vanilla to amplify the spice in tomato sauce, sweeten a summer salad with a vanilla vinaigrette, or douse your pork tenderloin in a vanilla maple glaze.