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Spiced Beef

A slow‑cooked beef shank stew flavored with celery seed, marjoram, and pork, served with its own gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Spiced Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Boil the beef shank with celery seed for 5 hours.

  2. Drain off the gelatin and chop the meat very finely.

  3. Add salt and pepper to taste, then place the mixture in a cloth on a platter and press it.

Brown and stew

  1. In a skillet, fry the pork slices until light brown.

  2. Add the beef in one piece and brown it on both sides.

  3. Cover the beef with water and stew it in a covered kettle over moderate heat for 4–5 hours.

  4. Add water as needed to maintain gravy consistency.

  5. About 30 minutes before it is done, season with salt, pepper, marjoram, and sliced onion.

Serve

  1. Serve the beef with gravy poured over it.

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

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

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Celery + marjoramtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together615 recipes

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  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 shank
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long simmering as its connective tissue softens.
Pork slices
Fried first to add browned flavor and fat to the pan for the beef.
Sweet marjoram
Adds a mild, floral herbal aroma to the stew.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the gravy as it cooks.

The step that matters

Adding water during the long stew. The beef is stewed for hours in a covered kettle. If the liquid runs low, the meat can scorch and the gravy becomes too thick or bitter, so water must be added as needed to keep the gravy at the right consistency.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, pepper, pork, marjoram. 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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