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A Receipt to Pot Lobsters

Lobsters are cooked in butter and spices, baked, then packed into potting pots with melted butter and white wax.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 300°F (150°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. Beat together the mace, nutmeg, cloves, pepper, and salt.

  3. Season the lobster meat with the spice mixture.

Bake and pot

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

  2. Tie a paper over the pot and bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven until tender.

  3. Drain the lobsters on a dish, then pack them whole into potting pots, splitting the tails only.

  4. Pour a spoonful or two of the red butter from baking on top, then warm it by the fire to melt.

  5. Cool the mixture, melt a little white wax in the remaining butter, and cover the lobsters.

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 that is cooked slowly and packed in butter.
Butter
Carries the flavour and keeps the lobster moist during slow baking and storage.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the lobster meat.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour that complements the lobster.

The step that matters

Bake until tender in a covered pot. The pot is sealed with paper and the lobster is cooked in butter, so heat must be gentle and steady. Overcooking toughens the proteins and makes the meat dry and stringy, even though it sits in fat.

Swap the mace

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

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

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