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Pottbd Meats

A dish of finely ground roasted meat mixed with cold butter, optionally thickened with arrowroot or flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,533 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Pottbd Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove any fat, skin, and gristle from the roasted meat.

  2. Finely grind the meat until it forms a smooth paste.

Mix and serve

  1. Mix the ground meat with cold fresh butter until well combined.

  2. If desired, blend in arrowroot or flour for thickening.

  3. Serve immediately after preparation.

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 + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Beef + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together155 recipes

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

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

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

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 spread, giving it its savory flavor and dense texture.
Cold fresh butter
Adds fat that binds the ground meat into a smooth, spreadable paste.
Arrowroot or flour
Thickens the mixture, helping it hold together and firm up slightly.

The step that matters

Grinding to a smooth paste. If the meat is not ground finely enough, the texture stays grainy and the butter cannot blend evenly through it. Fine grinding gives a uniform, spreadable result.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, 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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