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Bceuf Roy Ale

A roast beef roll stuffed with bacon, herbs, oysters, and spiced, baked and served with its own jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove 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 ↓

Bceuf Roy Ale

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the beef

  1. Bone the brisket and scoop holes or cut slits in the meat, about 1 inch apart.

  2. Fill one hole with small rolls of fat bacon, a second with chopped parsley and sweet herbs seasoned with pepper and salt, and the third with small cut oysters powdered with a little mace and nutmeg.

  3. Tie the meat into a roll and place it in a baking pan.

Bake and make the jelly

  1. Pour 1 pint of hot sherry over the meat and add 6 cloves.

  2. Dust the meat with flour, cover it tightly, and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 3 hours.

  3. After baking, pour off the gravy and let it cool to skim off the fat; if not jelly-like, boil it a little longer.

Serve

  1. Serve the beef cold with the jelly around it.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Brisket of beef
Forms the main body of the roll and becomes tender and moist during long, covered baking.
Fat bacon
Melts slowly into the meat, adding moisture and richness to the lean beef.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour that deepens the seasoning inside the roll.
Flour
Dusted on the meat, it helps thicken the cooking liquid into gravy.
Hot sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic flavour while steaming the meat in the pan.

The step that matters

Boiling the gravy until it sets. The jelly sets only if enough gelatin from the meat and reduced liquid is concentrated. Skimming the fat first keeps the jelly clear, and boiling longer helps it firm up when chilled.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, pepper, oyster, nutmeg, sherry, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, pepper, oyster, nutmeg, sherry, clove. 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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