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Essence of Lobsters

A preserved lobster essence made by simmering lobster meat with salt, water, cayenne pepper, and mace, then forming a paste and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Essence of Lobsters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobsters

  1. Clean the lobsters in salt and water.

  2. Tie up the tails.

  3. Place them in a pan of boiling water with dissolved salt and saltpetre.

  4. Cool the lobsters.

  5. Remove all the meat and coral.

  6. Chop into dice.

Make the essence

  1. Simmer the chopped lobster meat with 1½ pounds of coarse sea salt and 2 quarts of water for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the lobster from the pan.

  3. Pound it in a mortar with cayenne pepper and powdered mace, adding some of the cooking water to form a paste.

  4. Return the mixture to the pan with the remaining water and simmer for 30 minutes.

Jar and seal

  1. Once cooled, fill clean glass jars with the mixture.

  2. Cork them well.

  3. Seal them.

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. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lobster + macetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together596 recipes
  3. Lobster + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,247 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Live lobsters
Provide the meat and coral that form the body of the essence.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives it a cured colour and flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the lobster and draws out moisture during simmering.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat and pungency that carries through the long simmer.
Powdered mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the paste.

The step that matters

Pounding the lobster into a paste with cooking water. Adding the cooking water gradually keeps the mixture loose enough to blend evenly with the spices. Without it the paste can stay dry and clumpy, so the cayenne and mace will not distribute through the meat before the final simmer.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, 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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