Name: Potted Meat
Ingredients: well-roasted or boiled meat; butter; reduced gravy; 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce; pounded cloves; allspice; mace or grated nutmeg; coarse sea salt; cayenne pepper

Why it works: Clove and allspice 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 Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Remove all gristle, hard pieces, and fat from the meat.
Mince the meat and pound it in a mortar with a little butter, reduced gravy, and Worcestershire sauce.
Beat the mixture to a smooth paste, seasoning with pounded cloves, allspice, mace or nutmeg, salt, and cayenne.
Put the mixture into pots, press it down tightly, and cover with clarified butter.
Store in a cool, dry place.

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.

Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,189 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

Swap the mace

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

Nutmegfits better
Cinnamonfits better
Thymefits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, sauce, clove, allspice, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.