Name: To Pot Lobster Cold
Ingredients: 1 hen lobster; spawn and coral from the lobster; meat from the claws; ¾ ounce mace; cayenne pepper to taste; white pepper to taste; thick melted butter; clarified butter

Why it works: Mace and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

To Pot Lobster Cold

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the meat from the claws and mix it with the spawn, coral, and seasoning in a mortar.
Add thick melted butter until it forms a paste.
Take the meat from the tail and mix it similarly.
Layer half of the tail meat in the bottom of a pot.
Spread the claw mixture on top and cover with clarified butter.

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.

Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,695 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together909 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,257 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,609 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Mace and pepper 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

Swap the white pepper

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

Nutmegfits better
Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, mace, pepper, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.