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Beef a-LA-Royale

A stuffed brisket baked with bacon, parsley, oysters, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef a-LA-Royale

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Bone the brisket of beef and make holes about 1 inch apart.

  2. Fill one hole with fat bacon, a second with chopped parsley, and a third with chopped oysters.

  3. Season the stuffings with pepper, coarse sea salt, and nutmeg.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the beef in a pan, pour boiling wine over it, and dredge with flour.

  2. Bake for 3 hours, skim off the fat, dish the meat, and strain the gravy over.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Brisket of beef
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the stuffings while it cooks.
Fat bacon
Adds fat that melts into the meat, keeping it moist and rich in flavour.
Chopped oysters
Contribute a savoury, briny flavour that seasons the meat from within.
Boiling wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and with the meat juices forms the gravy.
Flour
Dredged over the meat, it helps thicken the gravy and encourages browning.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat. Fat rendering from the brisket and bacon collects on the surface of the liquid. Removing it before straining keeps the gravy clean and prevents it from tasting greasy.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, oyster, pepper, wine, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, oyster, pepper, wine, 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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