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Stuffed Stew of Beef

A beef stew with a filling of bread crumbs, parsley, butter, and pork larding, cooked in a savory gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 ↓

Stuffed Stew of Beef

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. Make gashes in the beef about 2 inches long and almost through.

  2. Mix black pepper, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, and salt.

  3. Rub the meat on both sides with the spice mixture and fill the gashes with it.

  4. Combine bread crumbs, parsley, and melted butter, then fill the gashes with this mixture.

  5. Cut larding pork into pieces the size of the gashes and press them into the filling.

  6. Tie the meat with twine to hold the filling in place.

Make the gravy and simmer

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter and brown it, then add flour and mix well.

  2. Stir in stock and bring to a boil, then add mushroom catsup, tomato catsup, Worcestershire sauce, onion, and bay leaf.

  3. Pour the gravy over the meat and simmer gently for 3 hours.

Bake and serve

  1. Remove the meat, place it in a baking pan, and pour glaze or gravy over it.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10-15 minutes to brown.

  3. Serve with strained gravy over and around the meat.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 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 stew and becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth gravy with body.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and butter to form a moist, soft stuffing inside the gashes.
Larding pork
Adds fat that melts into the meat, keeping the filling and beef moist.
Stock
Provides the liquid base of the gravy that the meat simmers in.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory, tangy depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 3 hours. A gentle simmer breaks down the tough connective tissue in beef round slowly. A hard boil would toughen the muscle fibres and can make the gravy cloudy or reduce it too fast.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, nutmeg, allspice, clove, bread, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, nutmeg, allspice, clove, bread, butter. 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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