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Mode.—Lard the Beef with Bacon

A roast beef marinated with bacon, vinegar, onions, parsley, and Spanish sauce, then roasted and glazed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mode.—Lard the Beef with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lard the beef with bacon.

  2. Place the beef in a pan and cover it with vinegar.

  3. Add the sliced onion, parsley, and seasoning.

  4. Let it marinate in the pickle for 12 hours.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the beef before a clear fire for 1¼ hours.

  2. Once done, glaze the beef.

  3. Pour some Spanish sauce around the beef and serve the remainder in a tureen.

  4. Garnish with boiled and glazed Spanish onions.

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

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Beef + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
The main cut; its long marinade and roasting turn it tender and flavourful.
Bacon
Larding adds fat and salty, smoky flavour that melts into the lean meat as it roasts.
Vinegar
Its acidity tenderises the surface of the beef during the long marinade and adds tang.
Onion
Sliced into the marinade, it adds aromatic sweetness and flavour to the pickle.

The step that matters

Let it marinate in the pickle for 12 hours. Vinegar is acidic and only penetrates and softens the surface of meat slowly. Too short a marinade leaves the beef tough and sharp-tasting on the outside, so the full time matters.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, vinegar, onion, sauce):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, onion, sauce. 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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