Skip to main content
Main

Beef, Fricandeau of

A larded beef dish stewed with stock or water, sherry, and spices, then glazed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef, Fricandeau of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut bacon into thin strips and season with pepper, salt, cloves, mace, and allspice.

  2. Lard the beef with the seasoned bacon.

Stew

  1. Place the beef in a stewpan with stock or water, sherry, herbs, shallots, cloves, and additional pepper and salt.

  2. Stew the meat gently until tender, then remove and cover it.

Glaze and serve

  1. Skim off the fat from the gravy and strain it.

  2. Boil the strained gravy until it becomes a glaze.

  3. Glaze the larded side of the beef with the glaze and serve.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Allspice + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef inside fillet of sirloin
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long, gentle stewing.
Bacon strips
Lardoons add fat and moisture within the lean beef as it cooks.
Stock or water
Liquid that gently cooks the meat and forms the base of the gravy.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the cooking liquid and gravy.
Shallots
Add savory sweetness and aroma to the gravy as they soften in the liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the strained gravy until it becomes a glaze. Reducing the gravy concentrates its gelatin and flavor, so it clings to the meat as a glossy coating instead of running off as thin liquid.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, clove, allspice, sherry, shallot):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, allspice, sherry, shallot. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes