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To Pot Lobsters

A lobster dish cooked in butter with mace, white pepper, nutmeg, bay leaves, and optional cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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

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 salt.

  4. Press the seasoned meat into a pot.

  5. Cover with butter.

Bake and set

  1. Bake for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the spawn.

  3. Once cooled, remove the lobster.

  4. Place it into pots with some of the butter.

  5. Heat the remaining butter in a mortar with some of the spawn. Mix to cover the pots.

  6. Strain.

  7. Add cayenne if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

Lobsters
Provide the main meat, which sets the flavour and texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the meat and carrying flavour through the pots.
Spawn (in the method)
Adds rich, concentrated flavour and colour to the butter used for covering the pots.

The step that matters

Bake for 30 minutes. Baking gently sets the seasoned meat and butter together; overbaking can make the lobster tough and dry, while underbaking leaves the pot unset.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, 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.

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