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Marinated Beef

A beef fillet marinated in a vinegar, wine, and water pickle, then braised with bacon, anchovies, and a sauce of flour, milk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Marinated Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Sprinkle the fillet of beef with coarse sea salt and let it stand for 4 hours.

  2. Make a pickle with vinegar, red wine, and water in equal parts, adding onions, lemon slices, bay leaves, ginger, thyme, and marjoram.

  3. Boil the pickle and pour it over the fillet.

  4. Let it sit for 3 days, boiling the pickle and pouring it over the fillet each day.

  5. On the fourth day, remove the fillet and lard it with anchovies.

Cook the beef

  1. Place the fillet in a cooking pot on a layer of fat bacon slices, cover with more bacon, and moisten with some pickle.

  2. Cover with buttered paper and cook, adding a little pickle occasionally.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Mix flour with boiled milk, then add butter, minced anchovies, and some pickle.

  2. Cook over heat.

  3. Strain the sauce.

  4. Add capers.

  5. Pour over the fillet.

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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  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

Fillet of beef
Is the main meat that becomes tender and flavourful through marinating and slow cooking.
Vinegar
Acidity in the pickle helps tenderise the beef and gives it a sharp, tangy flavour.
Red wine
Adds depth and aroma to the pickle and contributes acidity to the marinade.
Fat bacon
Melts during cooking, adding fat that keeps the beef moist and adds savoury flavour.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth sauce by swelling with heat.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth that blends into the sauce and beef.

The step that matters

Cooking the beef covered with buttered paper. Cooking gently under a cover with a little pickle added from time to time keeps the beef moist. Too much heat or too little liquid can dry out the meat and toughen its proteins.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, vinegar, red wine, onion, clove, ginger, thyme):

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, red wine, onion, clove, ginger, thyme. 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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