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Potted Meats and Fish

A paste of ground meat mixed with butter and seasonings, formed into a smooth consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,533 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Potted Meats and Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove gristly portions and hard fat from the meat.

  2. Cut the meat into small pieces.

Make the paste

  1. Mix the meat with butter and seasonings.

  2. Pound the mixture until it forms a smooth paste.

  3. Ensure the mixture is free from lumps or unbroken fibers.

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. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  3. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 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

Meat
Forms the base of the paste and supplies the savory flavor and body.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the paste smooth, rich, and easy to spread.

The step that matters

Pounding to a smooth paste. Pounding breaks down muscle fibers and distributes fat evenly. If fibers or lumps remain, the texture stays coarse and uneven instead of spreadable.

“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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