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Spiced Beef

Spiced beef prepared with saltpetre, sugar, pepper, mace, cloves, cayenne, suet, and baked with gravy or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Spiced Beef

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. Remove the bone from the beef ribs.

  2. Rub the meat with saltpetre, then rub it with moist sugar.

  3. Let it sit for 2 days.

  4. Mix ground pepper, pounded mace, cloves, and cayenne pepper. Rub this mixture into the beef, especially into any holes.

  5. Add salt as needed.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the meat into a round shape and bind it with a strong string.

  2. Cover the beef with finely chopped suet.

  3. Place the meat in a meat tin or earthen jar with 1 cup of gravy or water underneath to prevent burning.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 5 to 6 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef ribs
Provide the main meat, and their fat keeps the joint moist during long baking.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, helping it keep its colour and a firm, cured texture.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the salt and spices in the cure.
Ground pepper
Adds sharp, warm flavour to the spice rub that coats the meat.
Suet
Covers the joint with fat that bastes it and keeps the surface from drying out.

The step that matters

Placing the meat over gravy or water in the tin. The liquid underneath keeps the pan from scorching during the 5 to 6 hour bake and creates a moist, gentle heat around the meat.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, pepper, 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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