Skip to main content
Main

To Pot Lobsters

Lobster meat is boiled, seasoned, and baked in butter, optionally spiced with cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 meat and cut it into small bits.

  3. Season the meat with mace, white pepper, nutmeg, and coarse sea salt.

  4. Press the seasoned meat into a pot.

  5. Cover the pot with butter.

Bake and set

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for half an hour.

  2. Add the lobster spawn when cold.

  3. Transfer the lobster into pots with some of the butter.

Make the spawn butter

  1. Beat additional butter with some spawn in a mortar.

  2. Mix the beaten butter and spawn with enough to cover the pots.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. If desired, add cayenne pepper.

  5. Let it cool before serving.

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 main body of the dish, giving it its substance and sweet flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, sealing the pots and keeping the lobster from drying out.
Lobster spawn
Contributes concentrated lobster flavor and a rich color to the butter topping.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic flavor that complements the seafood.

The step that matters

Bake at 350°F (175°C) for half an hour. Baking the lobster gently in butter cooks the meat through without toughening it. Overheating makes lobster protein contract and turn rubbery and dry, so the timing and temperature matter.

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.

You might also like

Lobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipes