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A Receipt to Pot Lobsters

Lobsters baked in butter with mace, nutmeg, cloves, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Receipt to Pot Lobsters

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the lobster

  1. Pick all the meat from the tails and claws of the lobsters, removing the black gut.

  2. In a bowl, mix the lobster meat with mace, nutmeg, cloves, pepper, and salt.

Bake

  1. Layer butter in a deep earthen pot, then add the lobster meat and cover with remaining butter.

  2. Tie a paper over the pot and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until tender.

  3. Remove from the oven and let drain on a dish.

Pot and seal

  1. Place the lobsters whole in potting pots, splitting the tails if necessary.

  2. Pour a spoonful or two of the red butter from baking on top, then let it melt.

  3. Cool the pots and melt a little white wax in the remaining butter to cover 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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobsters
Provide the main meat, which turns tender and firm as it cooks gently in butter.
Butter
Cooks the lobster gently and keeps it moist, and later seals the pots.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the lobster meat.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour that complements the lobster.
Cloves
Adds a strong, pungent spice aroma to the lobster meat.

The step that matters

Bake until tender in a covered pot. Baking gently in butter under a sealed paper cover cooks the lobster slowly so it stays moist. Overcooking toughens the proteins and squeezes out moisture, so check for tenderness rather than relying only on time.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, nutmeg, clove, 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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