Name: Potted Meat
Ingredients: well-roasted or boiled meat (free from fat, skin, and gristle); fish, lobsters, prawns, or shrimps (fresh); ground white pepper; mace; coarse sea salt; cayenne; black pepper; cloves; butter, marrow, or suet (as needed)

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 ↓

Potted Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Cut and mince the meat or fish before using.
If the meat is very dry, pound it well before adding butter, marrow, or suet.
Season the fish with ground white pepper, mace, coarse sea salt, and cayenne.
For hare or brown meat, add a small quantity of coarse sea salt and cloves with black pepper.

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.

Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,695 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Meat + fishtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together479 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, fish, mace, pepper, clove, butter):

Nutmegfits better
Allspicefits better
Thymefits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, fish, mace, pepper, clove, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.