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Potted Beef

A preserved beef prepared by salting, boiling, baking, grinding, seasoning, and packing in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Potted Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the beef

  1. Rub the beef with saltpetre and let it sit for 24 hours.

  2. Salt the beef well with coarse sea salt and place it in a pot covered with water for 3 to 4 days.

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the beef, dry it with a cloth, and bake it with black pepper.

  2. Drain the beef from the liquid, remove the skin and veins, and finely grind it in a mortar.

Season and pot

  1. Season the ground beef with cloves, mace, and additional pepper and salt if desired.

  2. Mix in the melted butter, pack it tightly into a pot, and cover with clarified butter.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

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

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

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish once cured, ground and packed.
Saltpetre
Curing agent that helps preserve the meat and gives it a pink color.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, binding the ground beef together as it is packed.
Clarified butter
Forms a fat seal over the top that keeps air away from the packed meat.

The step that matters

Pack tightly and cover with clarified butter. Firm packing removes air pockets, and a full layer of clarified butter seals the surface from air. Together these slow spoilage and oxidation during storage.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, clove, 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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