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A Rump of Beef a Second Way

A roast beef stuffed with garlic, bacon, and suet, simmered and served with a sauce of claret, root vegetables, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and truffle work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 412 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-ethylphenol, which smells must. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Stuff the beef with garlic cloves in different parts.

  2. Make holes with a skewer and insert garlic as far as your finger can reach.

  3. Stuff with forcemeat made from diced bacon.

  4. Place the beef in a pot and cover with suet and diced bacon.

Stew the beef

  1. Add enough water to cover the beef and bring to a boil for 45 minutes.

  2. Cover the pot tightly and stew for 4 hours over moderate heat.

  3. Remove the beef and pour off all the liquid.

  4. Add 1 quart of claret to the pot and set over low heat.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare the sauce with turnips, carrots, or parsnips, adding broth and clear gravy from the beef.

  2. Boil the sauce with morels, truffles, and a glass of claret.

  3. Thicken the sauce with butter rolled in flour and serve hot.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Beef + truffletop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together412 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethylphenol (must).

  2. Truffle + buttertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Turnip + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,859 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together122,858 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Garlic + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together664 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Garlic
Adds aromatic flavour that permeates the beef during long, slow cooking.
Bacon
Its fat bastes the meat and keeps the stuffed beef moist during stewing.
Suet
Hard beef fat that melts slowly, adding richness and moisture to the lean rump.
Claret
Red wine that adds acidity and depth to the braising liquid and sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter into a roux.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and, with flour, gives it body and a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with butter rolled in flour. Flour must be fully cooked with the butter and whisked into simmering liquid, or the sauce stays pasty and tastes raw. Adding it too quickly causes lumps, so it should be whisked in gradually.

Flavor stand-ins for the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, turnip, truffle, butter, flour):

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Capersbetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turnip, truffle, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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