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Welsh Beef

A large round of beef marinated with saltpetre, spices, suet, and baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove 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 ↓

Welsh Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cure

  1. Rub saltpetre into the beef and let the beef sit for 1 hour.

  2. Mix coarse sea salt, white pepper, moist sugar, grated nutmeg, pounded mace, and pounded cloves, then rub the spice mixture into the beef.

  3. Turn the beef daily for 3 weeks.

Prepare

  1. Wash the meat in cold water and let the meat dry.

  2. Skewer the beef into a round shape and bind the skewered beef with tape.

Bake and press

  1. Place the beef in an earthen pan with chopped suet underneath and on top.

  2. Pour water or stock around the beef and cover the beef with a flour and water paste.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until tender.

  4. Pour off the gravy and let the beef cool.

  5. Press the beef under a heavy weight for several hours.

  6. Brush the beef with liquid glaze.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Round of beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and sliceable through long cooking.
Saltpetre
Helps the meat keep its red colour and adds a cured flavour during the long cure.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it deeply during the cure.
Moist sugar
Balances the salt and adds a mild sweetness to the cure.
Chopped suet
Adds fat that keeps the beef moist while it bakes.

The step that matters

Turn the beef daily for 3 weeks. Turning keeps the cure evenly distributed across the meat so salt and saltpetre penetrate uniformly. Uneven turning can leave some parts underseasoned or spoiled.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sugar, nutmeg, mace, clove, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, nutmeg, mace, clove, flour. 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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