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Spiced Beef Relish

A spiced beef roll made with ground beef, sage, butter, crackers, and eggs, baked and sliced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Spiced Beef Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the beefsteak very fine.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chopped beef, salt, pepper, sage, melted butter, crushed crackers, and beaten eggs.

  3. Shape the mixture into a roll.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the roll, basting with a mixture of butter and water.

  2. Once baked, let it cool and then cut into slices.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sage + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Sage + eggtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beefsteak
Provides the main meaty body of the roll once chopped and baked.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it hold its shape when baked.
Rolled crackers
Absorb moisture and help bind the beef so the roll stays tender.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the surface brown during baking.

The step that matters

Bake the roll, basting with butter and water. Basting keeps the surface moist during baking, so the roll does not dry out before the inside is cooked through.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, egg. 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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