Skip to main content
Main

Potted Lobster

A lobster dish where the meat is seasoned, pounded, mixed with a thickened anchovy liquor and butter, then set in a pot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg 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 meat and eggs from the lobster shell.

  2. Season the meat with mace, cloves, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and anchovy liquor.

  3. Pound the meat in a marble mortar.

Make the jelly

  1. Reduce the anchovy liquor by evaporation until it becomes a thick jelly.

Combine and pot

  1. Combine the thick jelly with the pounded meat and butter.

  2. Mix everything together.

  3. Press the mixture into a small pot.

  4. Cover the mixture with melted butter.

Store

  1. Once cold, cover the pot with paper.

  2. Store it in a dry place.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 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. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat and eggs
Forms the main body of the potted dish, giving it its rich flavour and soft, spreadable texture.
Anchovy liquor
Reduced to a thick jelly, it adds savoury depth and helps bind the meat together.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and the melted layer on top seals the pot.

The step that matters

Reducing the anchovy liquor to a thick jelly. Evaporation concentrates the liquid and its natural gelatin so it sets firm when cold. If it is under-reduced it stays runny and the potted mixture will not hold together; over-reduced, it turns salty and hard.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, egg, clove, nutmeg, pepper, anchovy. 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.

You might also like

Lobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipes