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Pressed Beef

A dish of tender flank beef pressed and served with clear meat jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pressed Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cure and cook

  1. Cure the beef lightly as directed for spiced beef.

  2. Boil the beef in stock with bay leaf, onion, and sweet herbs until tender.

Press

  1. Place the cooked beef between two dishes with heavy weights on top.

  2. The next day, trim the beef neatly and glaze it.

Set and serve

  1. Cut the beef to fit a deep tin dish and pour clear meat jelly over it.

  2. When serving, turn the dish over so the meat is covered with jelly.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Onion + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, and pressing compacts it so it holds a neat shape when sliced.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma to the stock the beef is boiled in.
Bay leaf
Adds a subtle aromatic flavour to the stock during boiling.
Sweet herbs
Adds aromatic flavour to the stock during boiling.

The step that matters

Pressing under heavy weights. Pressing the cooked beef while it cools squeezes out excess liquid and binds the meat together, so it holds a firm shape when cut and sits neatly in the jelly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat. 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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