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Potted Meats

A dish of tender roasted meat blended with butter and optionally thickened with arrowroot or flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,594 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Potted Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Take any tender and well-roasted meat, ensuring it is free of fat, skin, and gristle.

Make the paste

  1. Pound the meat thoroughly until it forms a smooth paste.

  2. Mix the meat with cold fresh butter until well combined.

  3. If desired, blend in a small portion of arrowroot or flour just before serving.

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. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Meat + arrowroottop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together68 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Butter + arrowroottop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Roasted meat
Forms the main body of the paste, giving the dish its savory flavor and texture.
Cold fresh butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the pounded meat bind into a smooth, spreadable paste.
Arrowroot or flour
Optional thickener that can give the paste a slightly firmer body.

The step that matters

Pounding the meat to a smooth paste. If the meat is not pounded thoroughly, fibres and gristle remain and the spread stays coarse and uneven. Fully breaking the meat down gives a smooth texture that the cold butter can then bind into.

Swap the arrowroot

The recipe marks arrowroot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, 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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