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Beef, Boast

A roast beef dish larded with bacon, stewed with water, onions, bay leaf, cloves, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Beef, Boast

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.

Roast

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Wrap the meat in paper to retain moisture.

  3. Roast for 3.5 to 4 hours, basting every 15 minutes.

  4. In the last 30 minutes, remove the paper, sprinkle with salt and flour to brown.

  5. Garnish with finely scraped horse-radish.

Stew the fillet

  1. For the fillet, lard it with pieces of fat bacon.

  2. Stew the larded meat gently with water, onions, bay leaf, cloves, and allspice until tender.

  3. Drain the meat and season with salt and pepper.

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. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Radish + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Radish + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together196 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Radish + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetal (cream, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin or ribs
Provides the main body of the dish, becoming tender with long, slow cooking.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and moisture to the lean fillet as it cooks, keeping it juicy.
Flour
Helps the sprinkled surface brown and form a crust in the final minutes of roasting.
Onions
Add aroma and savoury sweetness to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Removing the paper and browning in the last 30 minutes. Paper-wrapped meat stays moist but pale. Removing it late and dusting with salt and flour lets the surface dry and brown through Maillard reactions, so timing matters: too early and the meat dries out, too late and the crust burns or never forms.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, horse, radish, clove, allspice):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, horse, radish, clove, allspice. 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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