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To Pot Beef

A beef pâté made by pounding seasoned steak into a smooth paste and pressing into pots, then covered with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

To Pot 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 steak with coarse sea salt, moist sugar, and saltpetre.

  2. Let the steak sit for 24 hours.

  3. Dry the steak.

Bake

  1. Place the steak in a baking pan with mace, cloves, and fresh butter.

  2. Cover the pan with water.

  3. Tie paper over the pan.

  4. Bake for 4 hours at 300°F (150°C).

  5. Remove the meat from the liquid.

  6. Let the meat cool completely.

Pound and pot

  1. Cut the meat into small dice.

  2. Remove all fat and sinew from the dice.

  3. Pound the meat in a mortar with fresh butter, Cayenne, cloves, mace, and nutmeg until smooth.

  4. Press the mixture into pots.

  5. Cover the pots with clarified butter, about ¼ inch thick.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Rump steak
Provides the lean meat that forms the body of the pâté.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, giving it a pink colour and a firmer texture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the curing rest.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and richness, making the pounded paste smooth and moist.
Moist sugar
Balances the salt and softens the flavour during curing.

The step that matters

Remove all fat and sinew from the dice. Sinew stays tough and fat can turn greasy or separate, so the pounded paste will be coarse and unpleasant if they are not removed carefully.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, butter, nutmeg. 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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