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Potted Beef

A preserved beef dish made by pickling, baking, and pressing the meat with butter and suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 beef into small pieces.

  2. Sprinkle saltpetre, salt, and sugar over the meat and let it pickle for 24 hours.

Bake and drain

  1. Place the meat in a jar and cover it with suet from the meat.

  2. Seal the jar tightly and bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 3 or more hours.

  3. Pour off the gravy for later use.

Make the potted beef

  1. Pound the meat well in a mortar.

  2. Mix in the butter and a little cayenne or other pepper, adjusting salt to taste.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool completely before pressing it into pots.

  4. Cover the top with melted suet.

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

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

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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

Beef
Forms the body of the dish, and pounding it fine gives the spread its smooth texture.
Saltpetre
Curing agent that keeps the meat pink and gives it a cured flavour during pickling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the spread a soft, spreadable texture once it sets.
Sugar
Rounds out the saltiness of the pickling mix and softens the cured flavour.

The step that matters

Allow the mixture to cool completely before pressing it into pots. Butter firms as it cools, so pressing the mixture while it is still warm leaves it loose and greasy instead of holding its shape in the pots.

“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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