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Beef, Potted

A preserved beef dish made by pounding roast or boiled beef with butter, cayenne, and mace, then potting and coating with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,847 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Beef, Potted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef into small pieces and pound it well with a little butter in a mortar.

  2. Add cayenne and finely powdered mace to the mixture.

  3. Ensure all ingredients are thoroughly mixed.

Pot and seal

  1. Transfer the mixture into glass or earthen potting pots.

  2. Pour a coating of clarified butter on top.

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

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

  2. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Beef + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,969 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Butter and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the bulk of the potted mixture, giving it its meaty body and texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and binds the pounded meat into a smooth paste.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the meat.

The step that matters

Pounding the beef with butter. Pounding breaks the meat into fine fibres and works the butter in evenly, so the paste becomes smooth rather than stringy or greasy. Thorough mixing also spreads the cayenne and mace through the whole batch so no portion tastes harsher or blander than the rest.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter):

  1. Pepperfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter. 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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