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To Pot Beef

A slow‑cooked beef dish with spices, pork fat, and wine or vinegar, baked for eight hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

To Pot Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Remove all fat from the beef and cut it into 2‑inch square pieces.

  3. Mix the salt, pepper, cloves, mace, cinnamon, allspice, thyme, and basil in a bowl.

Layer and seal

  1. Layer some beef pieces in an earthen pot, sprinkle with the spice mixture, and add a layer of thinly sliced fat pork.

  2. Repeat layering beef, spices, and pork until the pot is full.

  3. Pour the tarragon vinegar or Madeira wine over the layers.

  4. Cover the pot with a paste made of flour and water to seal it.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the pot in the oven and cook for 8 hours.

  2. Let it cool and store for up to two weeks in moderate weather.

  3. Serve warm with slices of lemon or cold as a relish.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long, slow cooking.
Fat pork
Adds fat and moisture that keep the meat juicy during the long cook.
Tarragon vinegar or madeira wine
Adds acidity or sweetness that brightens and balances the rich meat and spices.
Ground cloves, mace, cinnamon, allspice
Add warm aromatic flavour that deepens the taste of the meat.
Flour and water paste
Seals the pot so steam and moisture stay inside during cooking.

The step that matters

Sealing the pot. A tight seal keeps steam and juices inside, so the meat braises in its own moisture rather than drying out over the long cook.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, clove, cinnamon, allspice, thyme, basil):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, clove, cinnamon, allspice, thyme, basil. 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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