Skip to main content
Main

Alamode Beef

A beef stew cooked with bread, butter, spices, eggs, flour, wine, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Alamode Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

  1. Soak the bread in cold water until soft, then drain and mash it fine.

  2. Mix the mashed bread with butter, salt, cloves, allspice, pepper, nutmeg, eggs, and flour.

Stuff and stew the beef

  1. Gash the beef and fill it with half of the dressing.

  2. Place the beef in a baking pan with enough lukewarm water to cover it.

  3. Cover the pan with a heated lid and stew gently for 2 hours.

  4. After 2 hours, add the remaining dressing on top and heat the lid to brown it.

  5. Stew for an additional 1.5 hours.

Finish the gravy

  1. If the gravy is not thick enough, mix a teaspoon or two of flour with a little water and stir it into the gravy, adding butter and wine before 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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 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

Eggs
Bind the dressing so it holds together when stuffed into the beef.
Bread
Forms the body of the dressing and absorbs moisture, giving it a soft, filling texture.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it combines with the cooking liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the dressing and rounding the gravy.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Gently stewing the stuffed beef. Slow, gentle heat under a covered lid lets the tough beef break down and become tender while the dressing cooks through. Boiling vigorously can toughen the meat and dry out the liquid.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, butter, allspice, pepper, nutmeg, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, butter, allspice, pepper, nutmeg, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes