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To Pot Lobsters

Baked lobster meat seasoned with mace, white pepper, nutmeg, and salt, served in butter pots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

To Pot Lobsters

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the lobster

  1. Half boil the lobsters.

  2. Remove the lobster meat.

  3. Cut the lobster meat into small bits.

  4. Season the meat with mace, white pepper, nutmeg, and salt.

  5. Press the seasoned meat into a pot.

Bake and cool

  1. Cover the meat with butter.

  2. Bake the pot in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the spawn to the pot.

  4. Allow the pot to cool.

Finish with spiced butter

  1. Remove the lobster from the pot.

  2. Place the lobster into pots with some of the butter.

  3. Beat the remaining butter with some of the spawn in a mortar.

  4. Mix the colored butter with enough to cover the pots.

  5. Strain the mixture.

  6. Add cayenne pepper if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the body of the dish and sets firm with gentle heat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and seals the pot against air.
Lobster spawn
Colors the butter and adds rich, briny flavor.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the meat.
Nutmeg
Adds sweet, warm aroma that complements the seafood.

The step that matters

Bake the pot gently. Lobster protein tightens and turns rubbery when overheated. The lobsters are already half boiled, so the pot only needs gentle heat to set. Stop at the stated 30 minutes to keep the meat tender.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

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