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Potted Dripping

A preserved fat made by boiling beef dripping with spices, straining, and cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper 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 Dripping

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Clarify the dripping

  1. Boil the beef dripping in soft water.

  2. Strain it into a pan.

  3. Let it cool.

  4. Remove the hard fat.

  5. Scrape off the gravy, repeating several times.

Flavour and store

  1. Melt the cold hard fat in a saucepan with bay leaves, cloves, salt, and pepper.

  2. Strain it through a sieve into a pot.

  3. Cover it.

  4. Turn the pot upside down to keep it safe from pests.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef dripping
Forms the fat that sets firm when cooled and carries the seasoning.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the fat and helps preserve it.
Whole pepper
Adds aroma and gentle spice to the fat.

The step that matters

Scrape off the gravy, repeating several times. Leftover water and meat juices in the fat can turn rancid and spoil it sooner. Repeated clarifying removes them, so the fat stays clean and keeps longer.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Rosemaryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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.

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