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Spiced Beef

A large piece of beef cured with mace, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, cayenne, brown sugar, and salt, then simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Spiced Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Mix mace, black pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and cayenne in a bowl.

  2. Rub the spice mixture and brown sugar onto the beef and let it sit for 3 days.

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

Cook and serve

  1. Wash the beef but do not soak it; shape it and place it in a saucepan.

  2. Add beef broth to the saucepan and bring to a boil, skimming off any scum.

  3. Add the onion, thyme, parsley, and carrots to the pot.

  4. Simmer gently for 4.5 hours, then leave 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
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long, gentle simmering.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the spice rub cling to the meat's surface.
Fine salt
Cures the beef, drawing out moisture and seasoning the meat throughout the curing period.
Beef broth
Provides liquid for gentle simmering, keeping the meat moist as it cooks.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 4.5 hours, then leave in the broth until nearly cold.. A rolling boil toughens the meat's muscle fibres and can break the joint apart. Gentle heat lets collagen slowly soften into tender meat, and cooling in the broth helps the beef stay moist.

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.

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