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Beef, Potted
Have ready a saucepan of boiling water, and a covered jar that will hold about two pounds of beef; let the meat be lean, and without bone or gristle. Place the jar containing the meat into the saucepan; put two tea-spoonfuls of water into it, and close the lid tightly that no more may enter. The water in the saucepan must be about an inch and a half below the lid of the jar, and it should boil slowly until the meat is done, which will be in about three hours and a half. It should then be chopped with a knife, and afterwards pounded in a mortar; adding some clarified butter, the meat-juice from the jar (if too much keep back a part), and a seasoning of pepper and salt. Fill into small pots, and pour some melted butter over the top; this will preserve the meat good for a long time.
A bain-marie method: the beef cooks in its own juices in a sealed jar standing in simmering water, then is pounded to a paste and sealed under butter. Everything hinges on the jar staying closed and the water staying below the lid.
- Ignore the keeping claimA butter seal over cooked meat excludes air without excluding bacteria, and potted meat held at room temperature is exactly the low-oxygen, low-acid environment in which Clostridium botulinum thrives. Treat this as a fresh preparation: refrigerate it and eat it within three or four days, or freeze it in small pots.
- The jar and the water lineUse a wide-mouthed preserving jar or stoneware pot of about 1 quart with a tight lid, not a screw-band jar clamped shut, which can build pressure. Keeping the water an inch and a half below the lid is the whole point of the instruction: no water from the outer pan may seep in and dilute what is inside, which is only the two teaspoonfuls added at the start plus the juice the meat gives up.
- "Boil slowly"A slow, gentle boil in the outer pan rather than a rolling one. Three and a half hours at that heat renders a lean cut soft enough to break under a pestle; a hard boil will not speed it up and may rattle the lid loose. Top up the outer pan with boiling water as it evaporates.
- The cutLean, boneless, no gristle: topside, silverside or thick flank all work. Skirt or shin gives more gelatine and a better set but needs picking over for sinew before pounding. About 2 lb of trimmed meat, as specified.
- PoundingChop first, then pound in a mortar as directed, or pulse in a food processor. Work the clarified butter in gradually and stop while the paste still has some grain to it, otherwise it goes pasty and dense. Reserved meat juice, added a spoonful at a time, is what keeps it from being dry.
- ButterClarified butter only, both in the paste and on top. The milk solids in whole butter will not set clear, will cloud the seal and will sour first. Warm the pots slightly before pouring so the butter runs into the corners and covers the surface completely.
- SeasoningPepper and salt are all Cassell's asks for, but mace and nutmeg were common seasonings in potted meats of the period and both are worth adding. Season the paste while it is still warm and taste it cold, since chilling mutes salt.
- YieldTwo pounds of beef, once cooked and worked with butter, fills roughly six to eight small ramekins. Serve cold, on toast or with bread and a sharp pickle.
Potting was the standard English answer to a surplus of cooked meat long before refrigeration: the flesh was reduced to a paste, packed tight to drive out air, and sealed with a layer of clarified butter that hardened into a lid. Recipes for potted beef, tongue, ham, salmon and shrimp appear in English household books from the seventeenth century onward, and by the time Cassell's was compiled in the 1870s the technique was firmly domestic rather than ambitious. What distinguishes this version is the sealed jar standing in water, with the practical effect that none of the meat juice is lost to the cooking liquid, so the beef essentially stews in its own gravy and the concentrated juice goes back into the paste. The style survives commercially in Britain as potted beef and in the related beef paste sold in jars, and it belongs to the same family of thought as French rillettes and confit: fat as a barrier, meat as its own preserve.