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Beef a LA Royal

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Royal

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, salt, and nutmeg.

  4. Stuff the brisket completely and place it in a pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour 1 pint of boiling hot wine over the beef and dredge it well with flour.

  2. Bake for 3 hours, skimming off the fat.

  3. Dish the meat and strain the gravy over it.

  4. Garnish with pickles.

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, becoming tender as it cooks slowly.
Fat bacon
Melts during baking, adding moisture and rich flavour to the surrounding meat.
Chopped oysters
Add a savoury, briny flavour that blends into the stuffing and meat.
Flour
Coats the outside of the beef and helps thicken the gravy and encourage browning.
Boiling hot wine
Provides liquid that braises the beef and forms the base of the gravy.

The step that matters

Skimming off the fat while baking. Fat rendered during the long bake can make the gravy greasy and heavy. Skimming it off keeps the sauce cleaner and lighter in texture.

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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