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To Pot Beef

A beef dish cooked in an earthen pot with suet, butter, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Rub the beef with brown sugar and saltpetre.

  2. Let it sit for 24 hours.

  3. Wash, clean, and dry the beef with a cloth.

  4. Season the beef with beaten mace, pepper, and salt to taste.

  5. Cut the beef into 5 or 6 pieces.

Cook the beef

  1. Place the pieces in an earthen pot with a little water and lumps of sweet suet.

  2. Boil the pot in a saucepan of water until the meat is tender.

  3. Remove the meat from the pot.

Pot and store

  1. Beat the meat in a mortar, adding more mace, pepper, and salt as needed.

  2. Incorporate butter into the gravy and fat from the beef.

  3. Beat until very fine.

  4. Press the mixture into pots.

  5. Pour clarified butter over it.

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

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

  2. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 bulk of the dish and, once cooked and beaten, sets into the potted texture.
Brown sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness and helps balance the salty cure on the meat.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, helping it keep its colour and resist spoilage during the resting period.
Sweet suet
Adds fat that keeps the meat moist as it cooks and enriches the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that binds the beaten meat into a smooth, spreadable mixture.

The step that matters

Beat until very fine. Beating breaks the cooked meat fibres into a smooth paste, so the mixture spreads evenly and holds together when pressed into pots.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

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