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To Pot Lobster Hot

A baked lobster dish with head, claw, and tail meat mixed with spices and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and lobster work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 909 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

To Pot Lobster Hot

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the lobster paste

  1. Pound the meat from the head and claws in a mortar with cayenne, black pepper, coarse sea salt, and bruised mace.

  2. Add thick melted butter until it forms a paste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Remove the black gut from the tail meat and break it into small pieces without pounding.

  2. Layer half of the tail meat in a deep baking dish, add the pounded head and claw mixture, then top with the remaining tail meat.

  3. Cover the entire mixture with clarified butter.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for about 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Let it cool, then turn it out into pots, spread the pounded mixture on top, and pour more clarified butter over it.

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. Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Pepper and mace 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

Meat from the head and claws of lobster
Forms the richly flavoured paste that gives the dish its concentrated lobster taste.
Thick melted butter
Binds the pounded lobster into a spreadable paste and adds richness.
Meat from the tail of lobster
Provides the firm, whole pieces of lobster that give the dish its texture.
Clarified butter
Seals the surface and adds fat and richness, helping preserve the dish.

The step that matters

Breaking the tail meat without pounding. Pounding the tail meat would turn its firm texture into a mush. Keeping it in small pieces preserves the distinct bite of lobster throughout the dish.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, 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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