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Spiced Beef

A boiled, shredded beef mixed with spices, cooled in a mold and sliced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Place the beef in a kettle and cover with water.

  2. Boil slowly until the beef is tender and can be torn apart.

  3. If necessary, remove the beef and reduce the liquid by boiling it down.

Season and set

  1. Return the beef to the kettle and shred it with a knife and fork, mixing it with the liquid.

  2. Add the salt, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, and allspice, and mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it cool.

  4. Once cold, turn it out of the mold and slice for serving.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 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
Provides the main body of the loaf and, once cooled in its own liquid, sets into a sliceable form.
Cloves
Adds warm, pungent aroma that defines the spiced flavour of the loaf.
Cinnamon
Adds sweet, warm aroma that complements the beef and the other spices.
Allspice
Adds a blended clove-and-cinnamon-like aroma that deepens the spiced flavour.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until the beef is tender. Gentle simmering breaks down connective tissue slowly, so the meat becomes tender without seizing or drying out. Rapid boiling toughens muscle fibres and can leave the beef stringy, making it hard to shred evenly.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

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