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To Make Tough Meats Tender

A method for tenderizing tough meat using vinegar, cloves, peppercorns, onion, and a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper 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 ↓

To Make Tough Meats Tender

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickle

  1. Boil the cloves, peppercorns, and onion in vinegar for 10 minutes.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a broad earthen dish.

Marinate the meat

  1. Wipe the piece of tough meat and lay it in the pickle for 24 hours, turning it several times.

Cook and make the gravy

  1. Cook the meat in boiling water until tender.

  2. Let the water reduce until about 1 pint remains.

  3. Add salt and pepper, and cook for 10 minutes longer.

  4. Remove the meat and thicken the gravy with a little flour, boiling for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat hot with the gravy for dinner and use any leftovers 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Acid in the pickle that works on the meat's tough connective tissue, helping tenderize it.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it boils.
Cloves
Add aromatic flavor to the pickling liquid.
Peppercorns
Add aromatic, peppery flavor to the pickling liquid.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Marinating the meat for 24 hours. The vinegar acid must have time to penetrate and loosen the meat's tough connective tissue. Turning the meat exposes all surfaces evenly, so the tenderizing effect is uniform rather than patchy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, clove, meat, pepper, flour. 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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