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Beef Alamode

A preserved beef rubbed with salt, sugar, limes, stuffed, baked, and served in its own pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Alamode

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the beef

  1. Rub the beef with saltpetre and moist sugar.

  2. Place the beef on a board, cover with another board, and weigh it down with heavy stones for 12 hours.

  3. Rub the beef with coarse sea salt and limes several times over a few days.

Stuff and bake

  1. Prepare the stuffing by mixing parsley, thyme, anchovies or anchovy sauce, mace, black pepper, butter, and allspice.

  2. Make holes in the beef and insert the stuffing.

  3. Place the beef in a pan, cover with cold water, add whole black pepper, and seal with a paste.

  4. Bake for several hours until cooked through.

  5. Once cooled, remove the crust and fat, and serve in the pan.

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

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

  2. Lime + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together547 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beef + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish and is preserved by curing and salting.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and preserves the meat during the curing period.
Moist sugar
Balances the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
Anchovies
Adds savoury depth to the stuffing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Curing with salt and sugar over several days. Salt draws moisture out of the meat and dissolves into it, which preserves the beef. Too little salt or too short a cure leaves the meat vulnerable to spoilage, while the process needs time for the salt to penetrate evenly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sugar, lime, pepper):

  1. Corianderfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, lime, pepper. 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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