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Spiced Beef

A large round of beef seasoned with salt, saltpetre, allspice, mace, and black pepper, then slow‑steamed for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Purchase a round of beef weighing 12 to 16 pounds.

  2. Let it sit in coarse sea salt for 2 hours.

  3. Wash the beef clean and rub it with coarse sea salt and saltpetre until very red.

Cure and season

  1. Mix allspice, mace, and black pepper with the marrow from the bone.

  2. Let the beef sit in this mixture for 9 days, turning and rubbing it daily.

  3. Tie the beef tightly in a cloth.

Steam and serve

  1. In a cooking vessel, add 1 quart of water and place sticks in the bottom.

  2. Lay the beef on the sticks and renew the water as it evaporates.

  3. Steam for 3 hours or until a fork can easily pierce the meat.

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. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Beef + allspicetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,940 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Round of beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long steaming.
Saltpetre
Gives the meat its characteristic red colour during curing.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during curing.

The step that matters

Renewing the water while steaming. The water in the pot evaporates during the long steam, and if it runs dry the beef can scorch and dry out. Checking and topping up the water keeps the steam steady so the meat stays moist and cooks through evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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