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French Beef

A roast beef larded with pork or bacon, seasoned with suet, breadcrumbs, herbs, and wine, cooked slowly until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 957 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

French Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the bone from the beef and trim off excess fat.

  2. Lard the beef with long slips of fat pork or bacon.

  3. Mix minced suet, grated bread crumbs, sweet marjoram, grated lemon peel, salt, pepper, and egg yolk in a bowl.

  4. Fill the cavity where the bone was with the force-meat mixture.

  5. Tie twine or tape tightly around the beef to keep it compact.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the beef in a broad earthen jar or iron bake oven.

  2. Add whole pepper, onion with cloves, bouquet of herbs, bay leaves, and butter bits.

  3. Pour in the claret or port wine.

  4. Bake or stew for 5 to 7 hours until tender and browned throughout.

  5. Serve hot with gravy, or enjoy 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. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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 roast, becoming tender during slow cooking.
Suet
Adds fat that enriches the force-meat and keeps it moist as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorbs liquid and binds the force-meat so it holds together in the cavity.
Egg yolk
Binds the force-meat mixture, helping it set firmly during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and the flour coating helps thicken the cooking liquid.
Claret or port wine
Provides moisture and acidity that tenderise the beef during long, slow cooking.

The step that matters

Long, slow cooking until tender. Collagen in the round breaks down into gelatin only with long, gentle heat. Cooking too fast or too briefly leaves the meat tough, so the lid or jar should stay covered and the liquid should barely simmer.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, bread, marjoram, lemon, pepper, 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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