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Essence of Lobsters

A concentrated lobster broth made by simmering lobster meat and coral with salt, cayenne pepper, and mace.

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 with a brush, tie up their tails, and place them in a pot of boiling water with dissolved salt and saltpetre.

  2. Boil the lobsters until cooked, then cool them and remove all the meat and coral.

Make the essence

  1. Chop the meat and coral into dice and simmer in a clean pan with 1½ pounds of coarse sea salt and 2 quarts of water for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the lobster, pound it in a mortar with cayenne pepper and powdered mace, adding some of the simmering water to make a paste.

  3. 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, cork them well, and seal.

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 lobster and keeps its colour pleasantly pink.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the mixture and helps preserve it during long simmering.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that sharpens the flavour of the lobster.
Powdered mace
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Simmering the pounded paste with the water. Simmering for the full time with the right amount of salt and liquid lets the lobster flavour extract and the mixture reduce safely. Too little simmering or salt leaves it under-preserved, since the sealed jars rely on the salt and heat to keep the contents stable.

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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