Skip to main content
Main

Sirloin of Beef

A stew of sirloin beef with onions, cloves, allspice, stock, and a sauce of shallot, parsley, capers, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Sirloin of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the beef

  1. Cut the beef into slices or leave it whole and stew in water with bay leaf, roasted onions, cloves, and allspice until tender.

  2. Remove the beef, drain, and set aside.

Brown and simmer

  1. In a pan, heat butter and brown the beef on all sides.

  2. Add onions to the pan and cook until golden, using a dredger to keep them from burning.

  3. Pour in stock and tarragon vinegar, then simmer until onions are nearly tender.

  4. Return the beef to the pan and heat through, ensuring onions remain intact.

Serve

  1. Serve the beef with onions and sauce, or top with a mixture of shallot, parsley, capers, and egg yolk.

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. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Allspice + tarragontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin of beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender through long, slow stewing in liquid.
Onions
Turn golden when fried, adding sweetness and savoury browned flavour to the sauce.
Butter
Fat for frying that helps the beef brown on its surface.
Stock
Liquid that builds the body and savoury flavour of the sauce.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds a mild acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Browning the beef on all sides. Searing creates browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale, crowded meat stews up greyer and less flavourful, so brown it in batches over steady heat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, allspice, butter, tarragon, vinegar, shallot. 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