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Preserve

Potted Meat

A preserved meat mixture seasoned with spices, wine, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, and covered in melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Potted Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop any kind of cold meat very fine.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, cloves, and cinnamon.

  3. Mix with wine, vinegar, and Worcestershire sauce.

Pot and store

  1. Pack into a jar and cover with melted butter.

  2. Store in a cool place; it will keep for some time.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Wine + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the body of the spread, and its fine chopping gives a smooth, even texture.
Melted butter
Covers the surface to seal out air, helping the meat keep longer.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the meat.
Wine
Adds moisture and a mild acidic note that balances the rich meat.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury, salty depth that boosts the overall flavour of the meat.

The step that matters

Pack into a jar and cover with melted butter. The butter layer must fully seal the meat from air. Gaps let oxygen in, which speeds spoilage and fat oxidation, so the surface should be covered completely.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, clove, wine, vinegar, sauce, butter):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonthe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, clove, wine, vinegar, sauce, 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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