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Potted Lobster

A lobster cooked with mace, nutmeg, white pepper, cloves, sea salt, bay leaves, butter, and clarified butter, then served in potting pots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Potted Lobster

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. Remove the gut from the lobster; if the inside is not watery, add it.

  2. Season with mace, nutmeg, white pepper, coarse sea salt, and finely powdered cloves.

Bake

  1. Place a little butter at the bottom of a pan and smooth the lobster over it, adding bay leaves in between.

  2. Cover the lobster with butter and bake gently at 300°F (150°C).

Pot and seal

  1. Once done, pour the mixture onto a sieve and use a fork to place pieces into potting pots, adding seasoning.

  2. When cold, pour clarified butter over the lobster, but do not use hot 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.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Nutmeg + white peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Forms the main body of the dish, giving the potted meat its texture and flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and seals the lobster from air in the pots.
Clarified butter
Forms a clear, airtight top layer that protects the potted lobster from air.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the lobster.

The step that matters

Pour clarified butter only when cold. Hot clarified butter can cook the delicate lobster surface and blur the seal, while cooled butter sets into a clean, airtight layer that protects the meat from air.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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