Skip to main content
Main

Spiced Beef

A slow‑cooked beef seasoned with mace, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, cayenne, and brown sugar, simmered in broth with onion, thyme, parsley, and carrots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. After 3 days, rub the beef with coarse sea salt and turn it once every 24 hours for 12 days.

  4. Wash the beef but do not soak it, then skewer or bind it into shape.

Simmer and serve

  1. Place the beef in a stewpan and add beef broth.

  2. Bring to a boil, skimming off any scum.

  3. Add onion, thyme, parsley, and carrots.

  4. Simmer gently for 4½ hours.

  5. If not serving hot, leave the beef in its broth until nearly cold.

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
Long cure and slow simmering turn the tough cut tender and moist.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the beef and penetrates it, curing and seasoning the meat.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the salt and warm spices in the cure.
Cloves
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the cure.
Mace
Adds a delicate, aromatic spice flavour that complements the beef.
Beef broth
Provides moisture and savoury flavour for the gentle simmer.

The step that matters

Simmering gently after the boil. A rolling boil toughens meat fibres and makes the beef stringy and dry. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer over the long cook lets connective tissue break down slowly, leaving the beef tender.

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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes