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To Preserve Beef-suet for Frying, or Paste

A preserved beef suet paste flavored with herbs, eggs, oil, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Preserve Beef-suet for Frying, or Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the suet

  1. Melt 8 pounds of picked beef suet until dissolved.

  2. Let the melted suet cool.

  3. Skim off the fat and preserve it in a tightly covered pan in a dry place.

Make the herb paste

  1. Wash and scald a handful each of chervil, tarragon, burnet, and chives in salt and water.

  2. Pound the herbs finely in a mortar.

  3. Add the yolks of 2 hard-boiled eggs, 1 tablespoon of sweet oil, and 1 tablespoon of chopped capers.

  4. Mix these ingredients with ½ pound of fresh butter.

  5. Set the mixture in ice to cool.

  6. If the mixture is not sufficiently green, add a little spinach juice.

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. Chervil + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chervil + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chervil + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chive + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Provides rich fat that firms when cooled, giving the paste body and a solid texture.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and creaminess, helping the herb mixture bind into a smooth, spreadable paste.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Their fat and emulsifying qualities help bind the pounded herbs into a smooth paste.
Chervil, tarragon, burnet, and chives
Provide the aromatic flavour and the green colour of the paste.

The step that matters

Set the mixture in ice to cool. Cooling firms the fat so the paste holds its shape and spreads cleanly. If it warms, the butter and suet can separate or turn greasy, and the texture is lost.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, chervil, tarragon, chive, egg, capers):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, chervil, tarragon, chive, egg, capers. 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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