Skip to main content
Main

Spiced Beef

A cured and spiced brisket or flank, rolled, stewed, and glazed.

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

Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Spiced Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the joint

  1. Remove all bones from the brisket or flank.

  2. Rub the joint well with salt and let it cure in brine for 2 days.

  3. Spread the spice mixture over the inside of the meat.

  4. Roll up the brisket tightly and tie it with string.

Cook and finish

  1. Stew the rolled brisket until tender.

  2. Place the cooked brisket under a weight to cool.

  3. Once cold, remove the string and trim the joint neatly.

  4. Glaze the beef and let it dry before serving.

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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Marjoram + limetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lime + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Parsley + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together547 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Brisket or flank
Provides the main meat that becomes tender through slow stewing.
Coarse sea salt
Cures the meat in brine, seasoning it and firming its texture.
Ground cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the meat.
Ground peppercorns
Adds sharp, pungent heat and aroma to the meat.
Ground mace
Contributes a warm, nutmeg-like aroma to the spice coating.

The step that matters

Rub the joint well with salt and let it cure in brine for 2 days. Salt draws moisture out of the meat, then the brine dissolves salt and the proteins are changed, which seasons the meat deeply and helps it hold moisture during long cooking. Uneven rubbing leaves bland or tough patches.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, parsley, marjoram, lime, pepper, madeira wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, parsley, marjoram, lime, pepper, madeira wine. 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.

More spiced beef recipes

Roast 24Stew 17Roll 10Loaf 9Tongue 9Pickled 7 See all 71 →

You might also like

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