Skip to main content
Main

Baked Meats, &C. Rump of Beef

A slow-baked rump of beef seasoned with pepper, salt, cloves, and herbs, served with its own juices.

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

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Baked Meats, &C. Rump of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Remove the bone from the rump of beef and pound the flesh with a rolling pin.

  2. Season the meat with pepper, coarse sea salt, and cloves.

  3. Lard the seasoned meat across.

Bake

  1. Place the beef in an earthen pan with the broken bones, butter, bay leaves, whole pepper, shallots, and sweet herbs.

  2. Cover the pan tightly and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for six hours.

Serve

  1. Skim off the fat.

  2. Slice the meat.

  3. Serve with dried sippets and its own juices.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Beef + shallottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,103 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

Rump of beef
Forms the main body of the dish, which becomes tender over the long slow bake.
Lard
Larded into the meat, it adds fat that keeps the lean beef moist during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the pan, supporting moisture and flavour in the juices.
Shallots
Their mild onion flavour infuses the braising juices around the beef.
Broken beef bones
Release gelatin and savoury flavour into the pan juices as they cook.

The step that matters

Cover the pan tightly and bake for six hours. A tight cover traps steam so the low-moisture beef braises rather than drying out. Long, gentle heat breaks down connective tissue, so the meat becomes tender and the juices become rich.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, clove, butter. 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