Skip to main content
Main

To Pot Lobsters

A lobster dish cooked in butter and spices, finished with spawn and optional cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

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 coarse sea salt.

Layer and bake

  1. Press the seasoned meat into a pot.

  2. Cover the pot with butter.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

  4. Add the spawn.

Finish the pots

  1. Once cooled, remove the lobster.

  2. Place it in pots with some of the butter.

  3. Beat the remaining butter with some spawn.

  4. Mix it to cover the pots.

  5. Strain the mixture.

  6. 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. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the main body of the dish and gives it its sweet, delicate flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and coats the meat to keep it from drying out.
Lobster spawn
Adds a rich, concentrated seafood flavour and a creamy texture to the butter.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice note that complements the lobster.

The step that matters

Baking the pots. The lobster is already half boiled, so the bake should only set and warm the meat. Overbaking toughens the proteins and squeezes out moisture, leaving the lobster dry.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, mace, nutmeg, 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.

You might also like

Lobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipes