Skip to main content
Main

Potted Beef

A dish of boiled lean beef mixed with gravy, clarified butter, and seasonings, served in small pots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potted Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Procure a nice piece of lean beef, free from gristle and skin.

  2. Place the beef in a jar with 1 tablespoon of water and cover it tightly.

  3. Put the jar into a saucepan of boiling water, ensuring the water comes within 2 inches of the top of the jar.

  4. Boil gently for 3½ hours.

  5. Remove the beef.

Make the potted beef

  1. Chop it very small.

  2. Pound it thoroughly in a mortar.

  3. Mix in some of the gravy that has run from the beef and a little clarified butter.

  4. Add the seasonings.

  5. Transfer the mixture into small pots.

  6. Cover the mixture with a thin layer of warmed 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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

Lean beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow, gentle cooking in its own juices.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture, and its layer on top helps seal the pots.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 3½ hours. A gentle simmer keeps the water bath below a vigorous boil, so the beef cooks slowly and stays tender and moist instead of toughening.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes