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Lobster to Pot

A lobster paste pressed into a pot and served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Lobster to Pot

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Half boil the lobster in salted water, inserting a skewer in the vent to prevent water from entering.

  2. Once cold, remove the flesh and beat it finely in a mortar.

  3. Season the lobster flesh with beaten mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  4. Melt a small piece of butter and mix it with the lobster as you beat it into a paste.

  5. Press the lobster paste into a pot.

Seal with butter

  1. Melt butter in a deep pan over low heat, skimming off any scum.

  2. Pour the clear melted butter over the lobster paste in the pot.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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

Lobster
Forms the main body of the paste, providing its savoury flavour and soft, spreadable texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the paste, and when poured on top it seals the pot against air.
Beaten mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the lobster flesh.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour that complements the lobster.

The step that matters

Skimming the melted butter. Skimming off the scum and pouring only the clear butter keeps milk solids and impurities out of the seal, so the butter sets clean and helps preserve the paste.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, nutmeg, 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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