Name: Cold Beef Hashed with Vinegar
Ingredients: cold roast beef, beef steak, or boiled shin meat; Cayenne pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; vinegar, enough to cover the meat; a few grains of whole allspice; 2 whole cloves

Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 ↓

Cold Beef Hashed with Vinegar

Ingredients

cold roast beef, beef steak, or boiled shin meat
Cayenne pepper, to taste
coarse sea salt, to taste
vinegar, enough to cover the meat
a few grains of whole allspice
2 whole cloves

Directions

Prepare

Cut the cold meat into pieces about ½ inch square.
Season the meat with Cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

Pickle the meat

Boil enough vinegar in a saucepan to cover the meat, adding whole allspice and cloves.
Pour the boiling vinegar mixture over the meat and let it cool.

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.

Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,533 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast beef: Is the main protein that is cut into small pieces and seasoned.
Vinegar: Covers the meat and flavours it with acidity as it cools.
Whole allspice: Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the vinegar.
Whole cloves: Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the vinegar.

Swap the clove

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

Thymefits about as well
Clovethe original
Marjoramfits about as well
Tarragonfits about as well

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