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Lobster or Crab Potted

A preserved lobster or crab mixture made into a paste and covered with clarified suet or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lobster or Crab Potted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobster thoroughly and let it cool.

  2. Pick out all the solid meat and pound it in a mortar.

Season and pack

  1. Gradually add finely-pounded mace, black or cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, and a little butter while pounding. Mix until it reaches a paste-like consistency.

  2. Press the mixture down hard in a preserving pot.

Seal

  1. Pour clarified beef suet or butter over the mixture.

  2. Cover 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. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

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

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

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

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 meat and the spawn that colours and enriches it.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture to the pounded meat.
Clarified beef suet or butter
Forms a fat layer over the mixture that excludes air and helps keep it preserved.

The step that matters

Press the mixture down hard in the preserving pot. Pressing removes air pockets between the pounded pieces. Air left in the mixture lets it spoil faster, and a dense, even pack holds the fat seal firmly.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, pepper, butter, beef. 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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