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To Pot Beef

A preserved beef cured with saltpetre, sea salt, and water, then baked and buttered.

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 ↓

To Pot Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cure the beef

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

  2. Salt the beef with coarse sea salt and cover it with water in a small pan for four days.

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

Bake and pot

  1. Place the beef in a small pan, cover it with coarse paste, and bake at 300°F (150°C) for five hours without adding any liquid.

  2. Once cooled, remove any strings and fat, then finely beat the meat with warm butter and enough gravy to form a paste.

  3. Transfer the mixture into small pots and cover with melted 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. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the meat that becomes the rich, sliceable paste when cooked and beaten.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, helping it keep its pink colour and adding a characteristic cured flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the beef during the long curing period.
Fine butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture when beaten into the meat.

The step that matters

Baking without any liquid. The beef is baked in a sealed coarse paste for five hours with no added liquid, so it cooks gently in its own juices. Adding liquid would make the paste soggy and dilute the flavour, while the long slow heat is needed to make the meat tender enough to beat smooth.

“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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