Skip to main content
Main

Spiced Beef

A slow‑cooked beef stew seasoned with mace, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, cayenne, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the beef

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

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

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

  4. Wash the beef but do not soak it; skewer or bind it into shape.

Simmer and serve

  1. Place the beef in a stewpan and add beef broth.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim off any foam, and add onion, thyme, parsley, and carrots.

  3. Simmer gently for 4½ hours.

  4. If not serving hot, leave the beef in its 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
Long simmering turns the tough cut tender and gives the stew its body.
Coarse sea salt
Salt cures the meat, drawing out moisture and firming its texture over the long rest.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the salt and spices during the cure.
Beef broth
Provides the cooking liquid that gently moistens and flavours the meat as it simmers.
Cloves
Contribute a warm, pungent aroma that defines the spiced flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer gently rather than boil. A hard boil toughens meat proteins and makes the beef stringy, while a gentle simmer lets collagen slowly break down into tender, moist meat. Skimming foam first keeps the broth clear.

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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes