Name: Beef, Potted
Ingredients: 1 pound beef; 4 ounces butter; seasoning (cayenne, nutmeg, black pepper); 2 ounces cooked veal or mutton (optional); 1 dash anchovy (optional)

Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper 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 ↓

Beef, Potted

Ingredients

1 pound beef
4 ounces butter
seasoning (cayenne, nutmeg, black pepper)
2 ounces cooked veal or mutton (optional)
1 dash anchovy (optional)

Directions

If using very lean beef, use plenty of butter. If the meat is fatty, use equal parts of fat and lean beef with 2 ounces of butter.
Mix the beef with butter and season with cayenne, nutmeg, and black pepper. Do not add salt.
For fresh boiled beef, add salt and a dash of anchovy for improved flavor.
If using spiced beef, pound it with butter before adding any additional seasoning.

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.

Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + vealtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,784 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,697 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Veal + anchovytop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together456 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

Swap the nutmeg

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

Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
Celeryfits better
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, pepper, veal, anchovy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.