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Potted Lobster

A lobster mixture of meat, anchovy, cayenne, mace, and clarified butter, set in pots and chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Potted Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobster and remove all the meat, pith, and coral.

  2. Pound the lobster meat in a mortar until smooth.

Mix and pot

  1. Add the anchovy, cayenne, pounded mace, and clarified butter.

  2. Pound all ingredients together thoroughly.

  3. Transfer the mixture into pots and smooth the surface.

  4. Cover with clarified butter and keep in a cool place.

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. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Anchovy + peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,232 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).

Pepper and mace 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
Provides the main body of the potted meat and its delicate flavor.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and moisture, and seals the surface to keep the potted mixture fresh.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth and a salty background note that enhances the seafood flavor.

The step that matters

Pound all ingredients together thoroughly. Thorough pounding breaks the meat into fine fibres and blends the fat evenly through it, giving a smooth, spreadable texture rather than a grainy one.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, anchovy, 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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