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Venison, Beef Potted in Imitation of

A dish of beef marinated, baked, and ground into a paste, seasoned with wine, mace, pepper, salt, and garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove 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 ↓

Venison, Beef Potted in Imitation of

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Marinate

  1. Place the beef in a deep dish.

  2. Pour the wine over the beef.

  3. Season the beef with mace, pepper, coarse sea salt, and minced garlic.

  4. Let the beef marinate for two days.

Bake and store

  1. Transfer the beef and its marinate to a covered pot, adding more wine if needed.

  2. Bake the pot in a 400°F (200°C) oven for three hours.

  3. Once cooled, pound the meat into a paste and store in a pot.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Forms the body of the dish; slow baking in liquid breaks down its connective tissue for a tender paste.
Wine
Adds acidity and moisture, helping flavour penetrate the meat during marinating and baking.
Garlic
Contributes aroma and savoury flavour that carries through the baked meat.

The step that matters

Baking in a covered pot. The lid traps steam so the beef cooks in its own liquid rather than drying out. Slow, moist heat over three hours softens tough fibres, which is what makes the meat pound easily into a paste.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Rosemaryfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, wine, pepper, clove, garlic. 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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