Skip to main content
Main

Scarlet Beef

A preserved beef seasoned with mace, cloves, allspice, black pepper, salt, and suet, baked and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Scarlet Beef

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.

Cure the beef

  1. Mix mace, cloves, allspice, black pepper, and coarse sea salt together.

  2. Rub the spice mixture into the beef.

  3. Let it sit for six days, turning it daily.

  4. Rub it with the mixture.

Prepare and bake

  1. Roll and tie the beef firmly with tape.

  2. Place the beef and any remaining spice mixture in a small jar with a slice or two of beef suet underneath and on top. Tie the jar closely.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

Serve

  1. Serve cold, sliced thin, and garnished with parsley.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Tender lean beef
Forms the body of the dish, and the long salt-and-spice cure firms and seasons its meat.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture from the meat and seasons it during the long cure.
Beef suet
Adds fat that bastes the meat and keeps it moist while it bakes in the jar.

The step that matters

Turning the beef daily during the six-day cure. Salt and spices penetrate unevenly if the meat is not turned, so some parts can end up under-seasoned while others become overly salty. Regular turning spreads the cure evenly through the meat.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, allspice, 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.

You might also like

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