Skip to main content
Main

Spiced Beef

A boiled beef dish seasoned with garlic, peppercorns, bay leaf, sage, thyme, and celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Spiced Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Wash the meat quickly.

  2. Cut the meat into four pieces.

Cook the stew

  1. Cover the meat with boiling water.

  2. After boiling for 30 minutes, add the seasonings tied in cheesecloth.

  3. Simmer slowly until the meat is tender.

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. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Clove + sagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sage + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together723 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Its connective tissue breaks down during long, gentle cooking, making the meat tender and rich.
Celery
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour that deepens the broth.
Cloves
Add warm, pungent spice aroma that infuses the broth.
Bay leaf
Adds a subtle herbal aroma that infuses the broth during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly until the meat is tender. Vigorous boiling toughens muscle fibres and can leave meat dry. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the tough cut break down slowly into gelatin, which makes the meat tender and gives the broth body.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sage, thyme, celery):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sage, thyme, celery. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes