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A-LA-mode Beef— the Bath Receipt

A roasted beef dish from Bath, seasoned with herbs, spices, bacon, and vinegar, served with pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 ↓

A-LA-mode Beef— the Bath Receipt

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. Trim the beef and remove all fat.

  2. Finely chop sweet herbs and shallot, mix with spices and vinegar in a saucer.

  3. Dip bacon strips into the herb mixture and lard the beef on both sides.

  4. Rub the beef with remaining herbs and spices.

Bake and serve

  1. Flour the meat, add butter, and pour in water.

  2. Bake the beef at 350°F (175°C) until cooked.

  3. Strain the gravy and serve with pickles on top.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Shallot + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meat; a stewing cut becomes tender with long, slow cooking.
Fat bacon
Lardoons add moisture and richness as they melt into the lean beef.
Butter
Enriches the gravy with fat and body, helping it thicken with the flour.
Shallot
Adds mild sharpness and savoury aroma to the herb and spice coating.

The step that matters

Bake the beef at 350°F (175°C) until cooked. Stewing cuts are full of connective tissue. Slow, moist heat breaks it down into gelatin, so the meat turns tender rather than tough. Cooking too briefly or too hot leaves it chewy.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, shallot, pepper, allspice, clove, mace, vinegar. 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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