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To Pot Beef in Imitation of Venison

A beef pot roast marinated in red wine and spices, then baked and ground into a paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove 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 ↓

To Pot Beef in Imitation of Venison

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Marinate

  1. Place the beef in a deep dish and pour the red wine over it.

  2. Let it marinate for 2 days, seasoning with mace, pepper, salt, and garlic.

Bake

  1. Transfer the beef and wine to a covered pot and bake for 3 hours at 400°F (200°C).

Finish

  1. Once cooled, pound the mixture to a paste and pot it as described above.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Red wine + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the dense meat that becomes tender during long, slow cooking.
Red wine
Moistens and tenderizes the meat and adds acidity and depth of flavor.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the meat.

The step that matters

Baking in a covered pot. Keeping the pot covered traps moisture so the beef braises in its own juices rather than drying out. Long, steady heat breaks down connective tissue, which makes lean beef tender.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Rosemaryfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, red wine, pepper, clove, garlic. 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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