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Potted Beef
Place in a jar some lean beef with a little water, cover and place in a deep stewpan full of boiling water, and simmer gently for five hours; take out the beef, mince it very fine and pound in a mortar with a little pepper, salt and mace, then add six ounces or so of butter. Fill some small pots with this, and pour clarified butter over the top to keep the air out; tie down with paper and keep in a cool place.
This is a preserving recipe, not simply a spread: the butter cap is there to exclude air so the meat will keep for weeks without cold. That is the part that cannot be reproduced safely, and it is worth understanding exactly why.
- The butter seal is the problemClarified butter poured over meat and tied down with paper creates a sealed, oxygen-free, low-acid, low-salt environment. That is precisely the condition in which Clostridium botulinum spores germinate and produce toxin, and spores are not destroyed by five hours of simmering at 212F.
- "A cool place" is not a temperatureA nineteenth-century larder might sit anywhere from 45F to 65F depending on the season. The recipe gives no measured storage temperature, no holding time, and no acid or curing salt, so there is nothing in it that limits growth once the meat has cooled.
- Pounding adds riskMincing and pounding in a mortar distributes surface bacteria throughout the paste and destroys any structure. Nothing after that step reaches a pasteurising temperature again.
- Salt is decorative hereThe seasoning is "a little pepper, salt and mace" — a flavouring quantity, not a preserving one. Some potted meats used considerably more salt or a preliminary cure; this one is relying largely on the butter.
- No visible warningContaminated food may look, smell and taste entirely normal, so there is no way to inspect your way to safety. Potted meats and pastes were implicated in botulism poisonings into the twentieth century.
- If you want the dishUse a current, tested recipe for potted beef or rillettes with specified refrigeration and a stated shelf life. Do not adapt the timings or the seal above.
- Reading the methodThe jar-in-a-stewpan arrangement is a water bath, used because a sealed jar keeps the meat's juices in while the surrounding water holds the temperature just below boiling. Six ounces of butter is 1 1/2 sticks, which tells you the intended richness of the paste.
Potting is one of the oldest English methods of keeping cooked meat: the flesh is reduced to a paste, packed tight to drive out air, and capped with fat, a technique documented in household books from the seventeenth century onward and closely related to French rillettes and confit. By the time Oscar Tschirky compiled this book in 1896, potted beef, potted ham and potted tongue were sandwich fillings and breakfast-table staples as much as preserves, and commercial versions were sold in glazed ceramic pots. Its presence in a Waldorf kitchen manual reflects a hotel that had to feed sandwiches and cold buffets in volume before mechanical refrigeration was universal, and it is a good example of a technique that survived in print for decades after the food-safety reasoning behind it had been overtaken.