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Lobster, Haut Gout

A lobster stew flavored with white pepper, cayenne, mace, cloves, nutmeg, salt, gravy, butter, soy sauce, and red wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Lobster, Haut Gout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Pick the firm meat from the parboiled lobsters and include the inside if it's not thin and watery.

  2. Season the lobster meat with white pepper, cayenne, mace, cloves, nutmeg, and salt.

Stew

  1. Add a little well-flavored gravy, tiny bits of butter, soy sauce (or alternative), and red wine.

  2. Stew the lobster in this sauce for a few minutes.

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. Pepper + clovetop 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. Pepper + nutmegtop 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 main body of firm meat that forms the stew.
Well-flavored gravy
Adds savory depth and moisture to the sauce the lobster stews in.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded texture.
Red wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savory depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew the lobster for a few minutes. Lobster meat is delicate and becomes tough and rubbery when overcooked. Holding it in the warm sauce only briefly keeps it tender while it absorbs the flavors.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

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