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To Pot Beef

A beef dish seasoned with saltpetre, sea salt, pepper, butter, breadcrumbs, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Pot Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Rub the beef with saltpetre and let it sit overnight.

  2. The next day, salt the beef with coarse sea salt.

  3. Dry the beef with a cloth and season with black pepper.

Cook and finish

  1. Cook the beef in a pan over coal until just warm, but not oily.

  2. Remove any strings and cut the beef into very small pieces.

  3. Cover the pieces with melted butter.

  4. For leftover beef, mix it with fine breadcrumbs, nutmeg, and a little salt.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Beef + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,495 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the protein that forms the body of the dish.
Saltpetre
Helps the beef keep its pink colour and firm texture during curing.
Melted butter
Adds fat and moisture, coating the pieces so they stay tender.
Fine breadcrumbs
Absorb juices and fat, giving the leftover mixture body and a soft texture.

The step that matters

Cook the beef until just warm, not oily. Heating the meat gently keeps its fat from rendering out and separating. Overheating toughens the proteins and makes the texture dry and greasy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe 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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