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Spiced Beef

A stew of beef simmered with pepper, salt, cloves, mace, and lemon juice, then sliced and fried in butter and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Spiced Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Stew the beef in a small quantity of water.

  2. Add pepper, salt, cloves, mace, and lemon juice.

  3. Let it boil until dry.

Slice and fry

  1. Once cold, cut into ½ inch slices.

  2. Fry the slices in equal parts butter and lard.

Serve

  1. Serve thinly sliced cold.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Main protein whose muscle fibres and connective tissue give the stew its body and texture.
Cloves
Contribute a warm, pungent aroma that infuses the beef during stewing.
Mace
Adds a delicate, nutmeg-like warmth and aroma to the meat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the spices and balances the rich beef.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and helps the slices brown when fried.
Lard
Frying fat that promotes browning and adds savoury richness to the slices.

The step that matters

Let it boil until dry. As the liquid evaporates, the meat can scorch on the base of the pot and dry out. Keep the heat moderate and watch the pan, because the beef firms and toughens if it is overcooked.

Swap the mace

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

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

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