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Larded Flank of Beef Smoked

A smoked, larded flank of beef seasoned with salt, spices, herbs, and bacon, then boiled until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Larded Flank of Beef Smoked

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cure

  1. Bone the beef and remove the skin.

  2. Rub the beef on both sides with coarse sea salt, salt prunelle, saltpetre, coarse sugar, and common salt.

  3. Let the meat sit in this mixture for 8 days, turning it daily.

Roll and smoke

  1. Wipe the meat clean and layer the spices and chopped herbs on one side.

  2. Place the bacon slices on top of the spices and roll the meat tightly.

  3. Bind the rolled meat with broad tape and smoke it for 2 weeks.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the smoked meat until tender, adding vinegar to the water.

  2. Once cooled, slice the meat across.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef flank
Forms the main body of the roll, becoming tender and sliceable after long boiling.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the long cure.
Saltpetre
Helps the cured meat keep its colour and resist spoilage during the long cure.
Coarse sugar
Balances the salt and adds sweetness to the cure.
Sweet fat bacon
Adds fat and moisture inside the roll as it cooks.
Cloves
Adds warm aromatic flavour to the spiced filling.

The step that matters

Boil the smoked meat until tender. Two weeks of smoking and curing leave the meat very firm, so it needs slow, gentle simmering to soften the connective tissue. Boiling it hard can toughen the outside and make the slices dry and stringy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sugar, clove, nutmeg, parsley, vinegar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, clove, nutmeg, parsley, vinegar. 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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