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To Pot Lobster

A lobster dish cooked in clarified butter with spices, baked in a jar and finished with melted white wax.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pot Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove all the meat, red part, and spawn from the lobsters, keeping it as intact as possible.

  2. Divide the tail pieces in half and remove the gut.

  3. Mix mace, nutmeg, cloves, pepper, and salt together.

  4. Sprinkle the spice mixture over the lobster meat.

Pack and bake

  1. Layer the lobster in a jar with butter, then more lobster, until the jar is full.

  2. Cover the jar with buttered paper.

  3. Bake at 300°F (150°C) until heated through.

Seal and preserve

  1. Drain the lobster on a sieve.

  2. Return the pieces to the jar and pour the drained butter on top.

  3. Place the jar in a warm spot to melt the butter.

  4. Melt a little white wax with the remaining butter.

  5. Pour the melted mixture on top.

  6. Seal the jar with bladder and paper.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 that is packed and cooked in the jar.
Clarified butter
Surrounds the lobster, adding richness and sealing out air as it sets.
Black pepper
Adds sharp aroma and gentle heat to the spiced lobster.
Mace
Contributes warm, aromatic flavour that complements the lobster.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the lobster meat and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Bake at 300°F (150°C) until heated through. Lobster is delicate and overcooking makes it tough and dry. Heating only until warmed through keeps the meat tender while the butter seals the jar.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, nutmeg, clove, 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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