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To Pot Lobsters, a North American Receipt

A pot-cooked lobster dish seasoned with mace, nutmeg, cloves, black pepper, sea salt, butter, and sealed with wax.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove 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 ↓

To Pot Lobsters, a North American Receipt

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove all the meat, red part, and spawn from the lobsters, keeping it as intact as possible.

  2. Divide the tail pieces in half and remove the gut.

  3. Pound and mix together the mace, nutmeg, cloves, black pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  4. Sprinkle the spice mixture over the lobster meat.

Pot and bake

  1. Layer the lobster in a jar or potting pan with butter and fish until full.

  2. Cover with paper and bake gently until heated through.

  3. Remove the lobster and drain it on a sieve.

Finish and seal

  1. Rearrange the lobster pieces in the jar and pour some of the drained butter on top.

  2. Place the jar near the fire or in hot water to melt the butter.

  3. Once cool, melt a little white wax with the remaining butter and pour it on top.

  4. Seal the jar with bladder and paper.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 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. Clove + peppertop 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. Nutmeg + peppertop 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 meat that is preserved in the jar.
Butter
Forms a sealing layer that excludes air and helps preserve the lobster.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the lobster meat.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the lobster meat.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic spice flavour to the lobster meat.
White wax
Forms a firm top seal over the butter, keeping air out of the jar.

The step that matters

Bake gently until heated through. Gentle heat cooks the lobster through without toughening its protein or boiling off the butter, which is needed to fully cover and seal the meat.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, nutmeg, clove, 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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