Skip to main content
Main

Savory Beef

Savory Beef is a cold dish of boiled and finely chopped beef seasoned with salt, pepper, cloves, and sage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Savory Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Saw the shin of beef into four pieces.

  2. Place the beef in a pot and boil until the meat and gristle drop from the bones.

Make the set meat

  1. Chop the meat very fine and place it in a dish.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, cloves, and sage to taste.

  3. Pour in the boiling liquid from the pot and let it harden.

Serve

  1. Cut into slices and serve cold.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Clove + sagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shin
Supplies meat and gristle that break down during boiling to give the dish its body.
Boiling liquid (in the method)
Carries dissolved gelatin from the bones which sets as it cools, binding the chopped meat.

The step that matters

Pour in the boiling liquid from the pot and let it harden. The liquid must be hot enough to coat the chopped meat evenly before cooling. As it cools, dissolved gelatin from the bones sets into a firm jelly that holds the slices together, so it needs time to chill fully before cutting.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, sage):

  1. Rosemaryfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, sage. 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.

More cold beef recipes

Hash 44Tea 5Broth 3Collops 3Curry 3Galantine 3 See all 5 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes