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Modern Cookery

A slow‑cooked beef stew with spices, carrots, onions, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Wash the beef but do not soak it.

  2. Skewer or bind the beef into shape.

Simmer

  1. Place the beef in a saucepan and add 1½ pints of beef broth. Bring to a boil, skimming off any scum that forms.

  2. Add the onion, thyme, parsley, and carrots. Simmer gently for 4½ hours.

Serve or cool

  1. If not serving hot, leave the beef in the 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
Provides the main meat; long gentle simmering makes it tender as connective tissue breaks down.
Beef broth
Supplies the cooking liquid that gently moistens the beef and carries flavour through the pot.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they soften during the long simmer.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the broth during simmering.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum after boiling. Scum rising at the start of cooking contains coagulated proteins and impurities that would cloud the broth and spoil its flavour if left in.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, pepper, clove, nutmeg, 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.

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