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Potted Ham or Tongue

A preserved ham or tongue made into a paste, pressed into pots, and covered with clarified beef suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,729 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Potted Ham or Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the lean part of the cold boiled ham or tongue into pieces.

  2. Pound it in a mortar with the fat or fresh butter until it forms a fine paste.

  3. Season the mixture gradually with pounded mace or all-spice.

Pot and set

  1. Press the mixture tightly into pots.

  2. Cover the mixture with clarified beef suet, about ¼ inch thick.

  3. Let it stand in a cool place.

Serve

  1. Serve it in the pot or cut into thin slices for sandwiches.

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. Ham + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

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

  4. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Mace + beeftop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,969 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Butter and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 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

Cold boiled ham or tongue
Provides the main meaty body that becomes the spreadable paste.
Fat or fresh butter
Adds moisture and richness, helping the pounded meat form a smooth, spreadable paste.
Mace or all-spice
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the meat.
Clarified beef suet
Forms a solid fat seal over the surface that protects the mixture from air.

The step that matters

Pressing the mixture tightly into pots. Packing out air pockets keeps the paste dense and reduces air contact, which slows oxidation and spoilage of the fat and meat.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Pepperfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, beef. 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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