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A Good Receipt to Pot Lobsters

Lobsters cooked in butter with mace, nutmeg, cloves, pepper, and sea 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 Good 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. Cook the lobsters and remove all the meat from the tails and claws, discarding the black gut.

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

Pot and bake

  1. Layer 1 cup of butter in a deep earthen pot.

  2. Add the lobster mixture to the pot.

  3. Cover with the remaining butter.

  4. Cover the pot with paper.

  5. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven until tender.

Drain and serve

  1. Remove from the oven and let drain slightly.

  2. Place the lobsters in potting pots, keeping them whole and splitting the tails.

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 tender meat that is cooked and then sealed under butter.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and seals the meat during slow baking.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the lobster meat.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, sweet aroma that complements the seafood.
Cloves
Add a pungent, warm spice aroma to the lobster.

The step that matters

Baking until tender. Baking gently in butter under a paper cover cooks the lobster slowly so it stays moist. Too much heat or time can toughen the proteins and dry out the meat, so check for tenderness rather than relying only on the clock.

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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