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Pickled Lobster

Pickled lobster prepared by boiling lobsters, seasoning vinegar, and preserving the meat in the seasoned vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Pickled Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the lobster

  1. Boil water with coarse sea salt and add the lobsters.

  2. Once cooked, remove the meat from the shells, keeping claw meat whole and cutting body meat into large pieces.

Make the pickle

  1. Season vinegar with whole peppercorns, cloves, and blades of mace.

  2. Place lobster pieces in a stew-pan and cover with seasoned vinegar.

  3. Bring to a boil over moderate heat for 5 minutes, then remove the lobster.

  4. Boil the vinegar alone for 15 minutes.

Pickle and store

  1. Let both the pickle and lobster cool, then combine in a broad flat stone jar.

  2. Cover tightly and store in a cool place.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,415 recipes
  4. Lobster + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together692 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Lobster + macetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together596 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Lobsters
Provide the meat that is pickled and preserved in the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid and gives the pickle its sharp, acidic flavour.
Whole peppercorns
Add a warm, pungent spice aroma to the pickling liquid.
Whole cloves
Add a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickling liquid.
Whole blades of mace
Add a delicate, aromatic spice flavour to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Remove the lobster before boiling the vinegar. Lobster held at a boil for too long becomes tough and dry, so it is taken out while the vinegar is boiled on its own. Cooling both parts before combining keeps the meat from being cooked further and helps it hold its texture in the pickle.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, vinegar, clove. 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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