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Fricandeau of Beef

Larded beef stewed with spices, stock, sherry, and herbs, finished with a glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fricandeau of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the larding

  1. Cut bacon into thin strips and season with salt, pepper, cloves, mace, and allspice.

  2. Lard the beef with the seasoned bacon.

Stew the beef

  1. Place the beef in a stew pan with stock or water, sherry, herbs, shallots, cloves, and additional pepper and salt.

  2. Stew the meat gently until tender, then remove and cover it.

Make the glaze and serve

  1. Skim off the fat from the gravy and strain it.

  2. Boil the gravy until it becomes a glaze.

  3. Glaze the larded side of the beef with the glaze and serve.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Allspice + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Inside fillet of sirloin
Is the main cut of meat that is larded and stewed until tender.
Bacon
Lards the beef, adding fat and savory flavour as it cooks into the meat.
Shallots
Add a mild aromatic sweetness to the stewing liquid and gravy.
Sherry
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the stewing liquid, which reduces into the glaze.

The step that matters

Boil the gravy until it becomes a glaze. The gravy must reduce until it is thick and syrupy so it clings to the meat. Boiling too briefly leaves a thin sauce, while over-reducing can scorch the sugars and make it bitter.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, clove, allspice, sherry, shallot):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, allspice, sherry, shallot. 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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