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Savoury Beef, Stewed

A stewed beef dish flavored with vinegar, mace, allspice, peppercorns, ginger, cloves, bacon larding, and mixed spices.

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 ↓

Savoury Beef, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the beef into a neat square shape.

Pickle

  1. Boil the vinegar with mace, allspice, black peppercorns, ginger, and cloves.

  2. Let the vinegar cool, then strain it over the beef in a dish.

  3. Turn and baste the beef daily for four days.

Lard

  1. Lard the beef by rolling bacon strips in ground herbs and mixed spices.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 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

Beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender and rich during slow stewing.
Brown vinegar
Acidity that starts to soften the meat's fibres during the long soak.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that melts into the lean beef as it cooks.
Allspice berries
Warm aromatic spice that flavours the pickling liquor.

The step that matters

Turning and basting the beef daily. Each side must stay in contact with the acidic liquor so the marinade penetrates evenly; leaving one side exposed lets it dry and spoil unevenly over four days.

Swap the mace

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

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

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