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Rump 'with Chestnuts

A stew of rump beef and chestnuts, seasoned with suet, anchovy, spices, and served with a chestnut sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Rump 'with Chestnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Bone the meat and cut off any thin parts, reserving them for frying.

  2. Farce the meat with chestnuts, suet, anchovy, spices, and salt.

  3. Stew or braise the meat in gravy until ready.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the reserved meat with two large slices of bread.

  2. Take out a little gravy.

  3. Reduce the gravy.

  4. Season the gravy with pickled cucumbers and ketchup.

  5. Rub down some chestnuts to thicken the sauce.

Serve

  1. Dish the meat and place a toast at each end, with the fried meat on top.

  2. Pour the smooth sauce over the meat.

  3. Make a puree of chestnuts or other vegetables or fruits, seasoned with sugar, to serve as a side.

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. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Chestnut + cucumbertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Chestnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Rump of beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow stewing or braising.
Chestnuts
Add starchy body and a soft texture, and thicken the sauce when rubbed down.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the farce moist and rich during cooking.
Bread
Soaks up juices and forms a crisp, browned base under the meat.
Pickled cucumbers
Add acidity that balances the richness of the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew or braise the meat in gravy until ready. Low, moist heat breaks down the tough connective tissue in rump slowly. Cooking too fast or too hot leaves the meat dry and firm instead of tender.

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, anchovy, bread, cucumber, ketchup, parsley):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Chestnutthe original
  4. Peasfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, anchovy, bread, cucumber, ketchup, parsley. 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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