Skip to main content
Main

Potted Meat

A dish of stewed steak and ham seasoned with pepper, salt, mace, and water, then ground and served in glasses with hot butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Potted Meat

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cook the meat

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Combine steak, ham, pepper, salt, mace, and water in a pie dish.

  3. Cover the dish tightly and bake for about 2 hours until the meat is tender.

Prepare and pot

  1. Once cooled, remove the mace, then pass the mixture through a meat grinder.

  2. Mix the minced meat with gravy and 2 tablespoons of hot butter until it forms a paste.

  3. Press the mixture into potted‑meat glasses and pour hot butter over the top.

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 + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Pepper and mace 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

Steak
Provides the main meaty body; slow cooking softens its tough fibres into a tender texture.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour that deepens the taste of the spread.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and gives the paste a smooth, spreadable texture.

The step that matters

Bake covered at a low temperature until tender. Low, moist, covered heat slowly breaks down the meat's connective tissue, so it becomes tender without drying out. Uncovered or hotter baking dries the meat and leaves it tough.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

More potted meat recipes

Sandwich 3 See all 34 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes