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Potted Beef

A preserved beef dish made by slow cooking in clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potted Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beef

  1. Slice the beef thinly and beat the slices with a rolling pin.

  2. Sprinkle the beef with allspice, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

  3. Leave the beef in a cold place, turning it two or three times.

Cook

  1. Place the beef in a jar with a little cold water.

  2. Tie paper over the jar and cover it with a saucer.

  3. Cook the jar in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) all day.

Pound and store

  1. Cool the meat.

  2. Pound the cooled meat to a paste, using some of the gravy and bits of butter.

  3. Cover the paste with clarified butter if you want to keep it.

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. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

  4. Beef + allspicetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,940 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. 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

Lean raw beef
Forms the body of the potted paste as it slowly cooks until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth texture when pounded into the cooked meat.
Powdered allspice
Adds warm aromatic flavour that permeates the meat during long cooking.

The step that matters

Slow cooking in the jar. Cooking gently at a low oven heat for a long time breaks down connective tissue and keeps the meat moist. Too much heat can toughen it and dry out the gravy needed for pounding.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, 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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