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Potted Lobster

A lobster cooked with spices, butter, and bay leaves, then cooled and served cold or as a fricassee.

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

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the gills 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 in a pan, smooth the lobster over it, and add bay leaves in between.

  2. Cover with butter and bake gently.

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

Pot and serve

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

  2. This can be served cold or as a fricassee with cream sauce.

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 texture its meaty bulk.
Butter
Carries moisture and richness, and as a sealing layer keeps the lobster from drying out.
Clarified butter
Forms a sealed top layer that protects the lobster and keeps it fresh in the pot.

The step that matters

Pouring the clarified butter when cold. Clarified butter poured hot would be too warm to set into a firm seal and could cook the lobster further, so it should be added only once the lobster is cold.

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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