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Alamode Beef

Stuffed beef with salt pork, onions, spices, crackers, eggs, butter, and wine, simmered for hours.

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 ↓

Alamode Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Chop the salt pork and beef finely with the onions.

  2. Add salt, pepper, marjoram, cloves, nutmeg, and crushed crackers; mix with the eggs.

  3. Cut holes in the beef and stuff it with the mixture.

Brown and stew

  1. Melt butter in a kettle and brown the beef on both sides.

  2. Cover the beef with water and add any leftover stuffing.

  3. Stew gently for 4 hours, adding water if it reduces too much.

  4. When done, the gravy should be a rich brown; add wine.

  5. If the gravy is too thin, add flour to thicken.

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. Marjoram + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  4. Marjoram + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during long gentle stewing.
Eggs
Bind the chopped stuffing so it holds together when packed into the beef.
Crackers
Absorb moisture and help the stuffing hold its shape and texture.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the beef surface and enriching the flavor.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth to the gravy as it finishes.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory flavor to the stuffing as they soften.

The step that matters

Browning the beef on both sides. Browning creates flavorful Maillard reactions on the surface and deepens the gravy's color. Skipping or rushing it leaves the gravy pale and tasting flat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, beef, pepper, marjoram, clove, nutmeg, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, beef, pepper, marjoram, clove, nutmeg, egg. 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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