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Potted Beef

A dish of beef seasoned with salt, saltpetre, pepper, and butter, baked in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potted Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cure the beef

  1. Rub the beef with coarse sea salt and saltpetre.

  2. Let it sit for two days.

  3. Dry the meat and season it with black pepper.

Cook

  1. Place the beef in a small pan with butter.

  2. Cover the pan with pastry and bake at 300°F (150°C) until cooked.

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

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

  2. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main protein, which firms as it cooks and turns tender with slow heat.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, carrying flavour and helping keep the meat from drying out.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, helping it keep a pink colour and resist spoilage during the resting period.

The step that matters

Cover the pan with pastry and bake until cooked. The sealed pastry traps steam and fat around the meat, so it cooks gently and stays moist. Baking too briefly leaves the centre undercooked, while overlong heat dries the beef.

“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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