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Crab or Lobster, Potted

Potted crab or lobster is a chilled, buttered mixture of crab or lobster meat, cream, egg yolks, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Crab or Lobster, Potted

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Remove the meat from the shells and chop it finely.

Cook and thicken

  1. In a saucepan, combine the meat, butter, salt, pepper, and cayenne, and cook slowly for 20 minutes.

  2. Add the cream and egg yolks, stirring continuously until the mixture thickens.

Press and set

  1. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve and press it into pots.

  2. Once cooled, cover the mixture with clarified butter.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  3. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together922 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Crab or lobster meat
Forms the main body and flavour of the potted mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture as it cooks with the meat.
Cream
Adds moisture and softens the mixture into a creamy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as they heat, giving it a set, custard-like body.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle or scramble if the mixture is too hot or stirred too little. Keep the heat low and stir constantly until it thickens smoothly.

“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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