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Potted Beef

A preserved beef dish cooked slowly in a jar and served in small pots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Cook the beef

  1. Place the beef in a jar with the water and cover it tightly.

  2. Put the jar in a saucepan of boiling water, ensuring the water reaches within 2 inches of the jar's top.

  3. Boil gently for 3.5 hours.

Pot the beef

  1. Mince the meat and pound it thoroughly in a mortar.

  2. Mix in some of the gravy that has run from the meat and a little clarified butter.

  3. Add the seasonings and transfer the mixture into small pots.

  4. Cover the mixture with warmed clarified butter.

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. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 body of the potted meat, and slow gentle cooking in a sealed jar makes it tender.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth texture, and clarified butter seals the top of the pots.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the meat.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 3.5 hours. A rolling boil or water rising above the jar's rim could let liquid enter the sealed jar and make the meat watery. Gentle heat cooks the beef slowly so it becomes tender without drying out.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, pepper. 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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