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Beef Potted Like Venison

A preserved beef prepared with saltpetre, spices, wine vinegar, and claret, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Potted Like Venison

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 the beef

  1. Remove the inward skin from the beef and cut it across, especially in the thickest parts.

  2. Soak the beef in water for 6 hours.

  3. Mix the saltpetre with the white salt, then rub the saltpetre and white salt mixture into the meat.

  4. Sprinkle the wine vinegar over the meat.

  5. Let the meat marinate for 3 to 4 days, turning and rubbing it daily.

  6. Rinse the meat with claret.

Season and pot

  1. Season the meat with cloves, mace, nutmeg, white pepper, and Jamaica pepper.

  2. Combine savory, thyme, sage, and shredded lemon rind, then rub this spice mixture into the cuts of the meat.

  3. Bind the meat with tape and place it in a long pot.

  4. Add the claret to the pot.

  5. Cover the pot with the skins to preserve moisture.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it cooks slowly in the pot.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat and helps it keep its pink colour during marinating.
White salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the curing rub.
Wine vinegar
Adds acidity that works on the surface of the meat during marinating.
Claret
Adds moisture and wine flavour to the meat in the pot.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the meat.

The step that matters

Rub the saltpetre and white salt into the meat, then marinate 3 to 4 days. Saltpetre and salt cure the meat only if the mixture reaches every cut and the meat is turned daily. Uneven rubbing leaves spoilage-prone areas uncured, so the rubbing and turning must be thorough.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, wine, vinegar, clove, mace, nutmeg, pepper. 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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