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Alamode Beef

A large beef stew seasoned with pepper, salt, cloves, and wine, thickened with flour and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Alamode Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Tie the beef in a round shape with strong string.

  2. Rub the pepper, salt, ground cloves, and sugar over the meat the night before cooking.

  3. Make a force-meat by mixing the crumbled bread, sausages, chopped onion, sweet herbs, ground cloves, salt, pepper, and eggs.

  4. Make holes in the meat about two inches apart and fill them with the dressing, then sew them up.

Stew

  1. Place the onion filled with cloves into a pot with water and red wine.

  2. Insert skewers in the pot about two inches from the bottom and lay the beef on them.

  3. Cover the pot tightly to keep the steam in and let it stew gently for four hours, turning the meat two or three times.

  4. Pour a pint of red wine over the meat and let it stew for an additional hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with a little flour and salt, skim off the fat, and bring it to a boil.

  2. Serve some gravy over the meat and the rest in a sauce-tureen.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Clove + red winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Round of beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it stews slowly in liquid.
Eggs
Bind the force-meat so the bread and sausage hold together when stuffed.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it heats.
Red wine
Adds acidity and flavour to the stewing liquid and gravy.
Crumbled bread
Absorbs moisture and gives the force-meat body and texture.
Sausages
Add fat and savoury flavour to the force-meat stuffing.

The step that matters

Cover the pot tightly and stew gently. A tight lid keeps steam in so the liquid stays moist, while gentle heat breaks down the tough connective tissue in the beef slowly without drying or toughening the meat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, clove, sugar, bread, egg, red wine):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, clove, sugar, bread, egg, red wine. 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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