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Lobsters Potted

A dish of lobster meat seasoned with mace, nutmeg, white pepper, sea salt, cloves, and butter, then baked and served in jars.

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 ↓

Lobsters Potted

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the lobster meat as whole as possible, split the tail, and remove the gut.

  2. If the inside is not watery, add it to the meat and season with mace, nutmeg, white pepper, coarse sea salt, and finely powdered cloves.

Cook and pot

  1. Place a little butter at the bottom of a pan and smooth the lobster meat over it.

  2. Bake gently until done.

  3. Pour the mixture into a sieve and use a fork to lay the pieces into potting jars, layering with seasoning.

  4. When cold, pour clarified butter over the top.

  5. If not using clarified butter, it will be good the next day; if seasoned well and covered with butter, it will keep for some time.

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 meat
Forms the body of the potted dish, providing its main texture and flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and keeps the meat from sticking during baking.
Clarified butter
Seals the surface of the potted lobster, excluding air to help it keep.

The step that matters

Baking gently until done. High heat toughens lobster protein and squeezes out moisture, leaving dry, rubbery meat. Gentle heat keeps the meat tender and juicy.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, 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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