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Potted Lobster

A preserved lobster mixture of white meat and spawn, spiced and set in clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Potted Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Remove the white meat from the boiled hen lobster and mix it with the spawn.

  2. Beat the mixture in a mortar until well combined.

  3. Add powdered mace, white pepper, cayenne pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste.

  4. Continue to beat until it forms a stiff paste.

Pot and seal

  1. Press the mixture into a jar or pot as tightly as possible.

  2. Pour clarified butter over the mixture.

  3. Cover with a piece of bladder.

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. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

White meat of boiled hen lobster
Forms the main body of the paste and gives it its rich, sweet flavour.
Spawn of hen lobster
Adds richness and a deeper, more concentrated seafood flavour to the paste.
Clarified butter
Covers the paste, sealing it from air and adding fat and richness.

The step that matters

Pressing the mixture into the pot. Packing the paste as tightly as possible drives out air pockets. Air lets the paste oxidise and spoil faster, so a dense, even pack helps it keep and holds the butter seal in place.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, mace, pepper, 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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