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Potted Lobster or Crab

A preserved lobster or crab made by boiling, pounding, seasoning, and sealing in clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Potted Lobster or Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobsters thoroughly until cooked, then let them cool.

  2. Remove the solid meat from the lobsters and pound it in a mortar.

Make the paste

  1. Gradually add a little finely pounded mace, black or Cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, and a little butter while pounding, and mix until the mixture reaches a paste-like consistency.

Pot and seal

  1. Press the mixture into a preserving pot, then pour clarified butter over it.

  2. Cover the pot with a wetted bladder.

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 + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Lobster + macetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together596 recipes

Mace and pepper 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 mixture, giving it a firm, flaky, meaty texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the pounded meat hold together as a smooth paste.
Clarified butter
Forms a sealed layer over the top that excludes air and helps preserve the potted lobster.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour that complements the sweetness of the lobster.

The step that matters

Pounding the meat with butter into a paste. Pounding must be thorough and the butter added gradually so the meat emulsifies into a smooth, spreadable paste rather than staying coarse or greasy and separating.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, 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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