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Potted Head

A dish of diced meat set in gelatin after boiling with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potted Head

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cover the shank of meat with water.

  2. Boil until tender enough to cut into dice.

Make the potted head

  1. Remove the meat and cut it into dice.

  2. Return it to the pot.

  3. Season with pepper, salt, mace, celery seed, cayenne pepper, allspice, and cloves.

  4. Mix in a little gelatin.

  5. Let it boil for a short time.

Set

  1. Pour the mixture into a cold mold to set.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Celery + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,422 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Lower shank of meat
Provides the main body of meat, which becomes tender through boiling and is cut into dice.
Gelatin
Sets the cooled liquid into a firm, sliceable mass in the mold.

The step that matters

Keep the boil short. Gelatin sets by forming a network as it cools. Prolonged boiling can weaken that network, so the mixture should boil only briefly before it is poured into the cold mold to set.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, celery, allspice, clove, gelatin):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, celery, allspice, clove, gelatin. 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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