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Spiced Beef

A beef roast seasoned with mace, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, cayenne, brown sugar, and salt, then simmered with broth, onion, and thyme.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the beef

  1. Mix mace, black pepper, cloves, nutmeg, cayenne, and brown sugar in a bowl.

  2. Rub the spice mixture onto the beef and let it sit for 3 days.

  3. Add fine salt, rubbing it into the beef.

  4. Turn the beef once every 24 hours for 12 days.

Prepare and cook

  1. Wash the beef but do not soak it.

  2. Shape the beef as desired.

  3. Place the beef in a pot.

  4. Add beef broth to the pot.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  6. Skim off any scum that forms.

  7. Add onion and thyme to the pot.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Nutmeg + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

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

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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 the curing and slow cooking tenderize its firm muscle.
Fine salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat deeply during the cure, helping preserve it.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the salt and spices and helps give the cured surface color.
Beef broth
Provides moisture and savory depth as the beef cooks in the pot.

The step that matters

Turn the beef once every 24 hours for 12 days. Salt and spices penetrate meat slowly, and regular turning keeps every surface in contact with the cure, so the seasoning and preservation are even rather than patchy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, clove, nutmeg, sugar, onion, thyme):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, clove, nutmeg, sugar, onion, thyme. 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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