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Potted Dripping for Fish, Meat, Fritters, &C.

A preserved fat made by boiling beef dripping with spices, then straining and cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Potted Dripping for Fish, Meat, Fritters, &C.

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Clean the fat

  1. Boil the beef dripping in soft water.

  2. Strain it into a pan and let it stand until cold.

  3. Remove the hard fat and scrape off the gravy from the inside.

  4. Repeat this process several times.

Season and pot

  1. Put the clean fat into a large saucepan with bay leaves, cloves, salt, and pepper.

  2. Melt the fat completely and let it cool slightly.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve into a pot.

  4. Let it cool completely and cover it.

  5. Store the pot upside down to keep out pests.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef dripping
Forms the fat base that sets firm and carries the flavour of the dish.
Bay leaves
Adds a subtle herbal aroma as the fat is infused with them.
Cloves
Adds a warm, spiced aroma to the infused fat.
Whole pepper
Adds a sharp, peppery aroma that infuses into the fat.

The step that matters

Melt the fat completely and let it cool slightly. Fat that is not fully melted keeps solid bits and moisture that can spoil or turn rancid during storage. Straining afterwards removes residue, so the set fat stays clean and keeps well.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Rosemaryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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