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Potted Beef

A preserved beef dish made by baking in a jar with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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

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.

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the meat from a leg of beef and place it in a jar.

  2. Break the bone, remove the marrow, and add it to the meat along with the skin and fat.

  3. Cover the jar with paper and bake at 300°F (150°C) until tender.

  4. Once warm, remove the skin and gristle, and mix the meat with gravy.

Season and pot

  1. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then pack into pots and pour clarified butter on top.

  2. For a better version, rub ½ cup of brown sugar and 2 ounces of saltpetre on 12 pounds of fresh beef and let it sit for a day.

  3. Wash and dry the beef, season with pepper, salt, and a little mace, then cut into pieces.

  4. Place in an earthen pot, add pieces of butter, cover with paper, and bake for 3 hours at 300°F (150°C).

  5. After baking, remove the hard outsides, beat the beef in a bowl, and mix in melted butter and gravy.

  6. Once finely mixed, pack into jars and pour clarified butter over it.

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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

Leg of beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender and rich after slow baking.
Bone marrow
Adds fat and savory richness that enhances the flavor of the meat.
Clarified butter
Seals the top of the potted meat, excluding air and preserving it.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, giving it a pink color and preserving it.

The step that matters

Baking until tender at a low temperature. Slow, low-temperature baking breaks down connective tissue in tough cuts of beef gradually. Baking too hot can toughen the meat and dry it out, so the beef stays moist and tender.

Swap the mace

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

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

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