Skip to main content
Main

Beef a-LA-Royal

Beef à la Royal is a stuffed brisket baked with bacon, parsley, oysters, wine, and spices, served with gravy and pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove all bones from the brisket of beef.

  2. Make holes in the beef about 1 inch apart.

  3. Stuff one hole with fat bacon, a second with chopped parsley, and a third with chopped oysters.

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

Bake and serve

  1. Place the stuffed beef in a pan and pour 1 pint of boiling wine over it.

  2. Dredge the beef well with flour.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 3 hours.

  4. After baking, skim off the fat and place the meat on a serving dish.

  5. Strain the gravy over the meat and 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 and carries the stuffings as it cooks.
Fat bacon
Melts during baking, adding moisture and richness to the surrounding meat.
Chopped oysters
Adds a briny, savoury flavour that blends into the meat and gravy.
Flour
Coats the surface, helping the exterior brown and thickening the gravy.
1 pint boiling wine
Braises the beef, moistening it and forming the base of the gravy.

The step that matters

Dredge the beef well with flour. A thorough flour coating helps the surface brown and gives the wine liquid body, so the gravy thickens rather than staying thin.

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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes