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Italian Beef

A large round of beef cured with saltpetre, spices, and suet, then stewed and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Italian Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Rub the beef well with saltpetre and let it sit for 4 hours.

  2. Season the beef with beaten mace, pepper, cloves, and enough salt.

  3. Let the beef sit in the seasoning for 12 days.

Cook and serve

  1. Wash the beef and place it in a pot.

  2. Add 1 pound of finely shredded suet under and over the beef.

  3. Cover the pot and seal it.

  4. Stew the beef in its own juices for 6 hours.

  5. Serve 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. 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. Mace + peppertop 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).

Mace and pepper 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

Saltpetre
Helps cure the beef and keeps its color pink during long curing.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the lean beef moist during the long stew.
Salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the beef during the long cure.

The step that matters

Sealing the pot before stewing. If the lid does not seal, juices and steam escape and the beef can dry out or scorch. A tight seal keeps the beef moist and lets it cook gently in its own juices.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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