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Potted Beef As Venison

A preserved beef prepared with saltpetre, sea salt, spices, and butter, then baked and packed in clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg 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 ↓

Potted Beef As Venison

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.

Cure the beef

  1. Rub the beef all over with saltpetre and let it sit for 12 hours.

  2. Thoroughly salt the beef with a blend of coarse sea salt and common salt.

  3. Place the beef in a pot, cover it completely with water, and let it soak for 4 days.

  4. Wipe the beef with a cloth and rub it with powdered pepper.

Bake and prepare

  1. Put the beef in a pot without any liquid and cover it with a crust of brown flour.

  2. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 6 to 7 hours.

  3. Once cool, remove all strings and skins.

  4. Finely beat the beef in a mortar, then add powdered mace, cloves, nutmeg, and melted butter to the beef mixture.

Pot and seal

  1. Pack the mixture tightly into pots.

  2. Pour clarified butter over the top.

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 + nutmegtop 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. Pepper + clovetop 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. Pepper + nutmegtop 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

Beef
Forms the main body of the potted meat, giving it its firm, finely textured structure.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat and helps it keep its pink colour and savoury flavour.
Sea salt and common salt
Draw out moisture and season the meat, helping preserve it during curing.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, helping bind the finely beaten meat and keep it moist.
Clarified butter
Covers the surface to seal the pots and protect the meat from air.

The step that matters

Thoroughly salt the beef. Salt must reach evenly through the meat to cure and preserve it. Uneven salting leaves spoilage-prone areas and inconsistent flavour.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

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