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Potted Beef

A preserved beef dish cooked with bacon, sugar, saltpetre, mace, pepper, sea salt, butter, and clarified butter, then stored in pots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Potted Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the beef

  1. Combine beef, bacon, sugar, and saltpetre in a pan.

  2. Season with mace, white pepper, and salt.

  3. Let sit for 24 hours.

  4. Cut meat into small pieces.

Cook the meat

  1. Place in an earthen pot with butter.

  2. Cook over moderate heat for 3 hours, stirring to prevent burning. Remove from heat.

Pound and pot

  1. If there is any hardness, cut it off and pound the meat in a mortar.

  2. Gradually mix in clarified butter and additional seasoning to taste.

  3. Press the mixture into pots.

  4. Cover with clarified butter.

  5. Store in a dry place.

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. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Beef + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,969 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Mace and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 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 main body of the potted meat, giving it its texture once cooked and pounded.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that carries through the long, slow cooking.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, and helps bind the cooked meat into a spreadable mass.
Saltpetre
Acts as a curing agent that helps preserve the meat and gives it a pink colour.
Lump sugar
Balances the salt and helps the cure develop flavour and colour.

The step that matters

Cooking over moderate heat with stirring. The sugar and meat proteins scorch easily, so the mixture can taste bitter and burnt if left unstirred. Steady stirring over moderate heat keeps it cooking evenly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, mace, 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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