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 ↓
Another Way to Pot Lobsters, As At Wood's Hotel
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the lobster
Half boil the lobster and remove the meat whole as possible.
Split the tail and remove the gut; if the inside is not watery, add it.
Season the lobster meat with mace, nutmeg, white pepper, salt, and powdered cloves.
Bake and pot
Place 1 tablespoon of fine butter at the bottom of a baking pan and lay the lobster on top with bay leaves in between.
Cover the lobster with the remaining butter and bake gently at 300°F (150°C).
Once done, pour the contents onto a sieve and use a fork to place the pieces into potting pots, adding seasoning.
Set and serve
When cold, pour clarified butter over the lobster, but do not use hot butter.
Let it sit overnight; it will be ready to eat the next day.
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.
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Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,686 recipes
Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
-
Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,557 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
-
Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,400 recipes
Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
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Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,695 recipes
Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
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Nutmeg + white peppertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,375 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Lobster
- Provides the main meat that is cooked gently and then set in butter.
- Fine butter
- Adds richness and moisture, keeping the lobster from drying out during gentle baking.
- Clarified butter
- Forms a clear fat layer over the cold lobster that seals and preserves it.
- Cloves
- Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the lobster meat.
The step that matters
Pour clarified butter only when the lobster is cold. Hot clarified butter would melt the lobster and warm the meat, spoiling its texture and making the seal uneven. Cooling first lets the butter set into a clean, protective layer.
Swap the white pepper
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, mace, nutmeg, clove, butter):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Allspicefits better
- Gingerfits better
- White pepperthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, mace, nutmeg, clove, 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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