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Potted Beep As Venison

A preserved beef dish seasoned with saltpetre, spices, and butter, then baked and packed in pots.

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 Beep 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.

  2. Let it sit for 12 hours.

  3. Thoroughly salt the beef with equal parts coarse sea salt and common salt.

  4. Place the beef in a pot.

  5. Cover it completely with water.

  6. Let it sit for 4 days.

  7. Wipe the beef with a cloth.

  8. Rub it with ground black pepper.

Bake and prepare

  1. Put the beef in a pot without any liquid.

  2. Cover it with a crust of brown flour.

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

  4. Once cool, remove all strings and skins.

  5. Finely beat the beef in a mortar.

  6. Add ground mace, cloves, nutmeg, and melted butter to the beef mixture.

  7. Pack the mixture tightly into pots.

  8. 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 bulk of the potted meat, becoming tender and firm during long slow baking.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, helping it keep its pink colour and firm texture during curing.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during curing, helping preserve it.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons and cures the meat during the salting stage, helping preserve it.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the beaten meat a smooth, moist texture.

The step that matters

Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 6 to 7 hours. Long, gentle baking tenderises the connective tissue in the beef without drying it out. Too high a heat would toughen the meat and make it dry.

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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