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Smothered Beef, with Savory Rice Border

Smothered beef served with a savory rice border.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Smothered Beef, with Savory Rice Border

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the beef

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Place the beef cubes and onion slice in a bean pot, cover closely, and cook in the oven for 2 hours, starting slowly.

Make the rice

  1. Rinse and pick over the rice.

  2. In a saucepan, boil the tomatoes with the cloves for 10 minutes, then strain.

  3. In a double boiler, cook the rice with the strained tomatoes until tender.

  4. Stir in the butter, salt, pepper, and curry if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve the beef in the center of a platter and arrange the rice around it.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Round beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender during the long, slow cooking in a covered pot.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture, flavoring the rice as it cooks in the strained liquid.
Rice
Absorbs the tomato liquid as it cooks, becoming tender and well flavored.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the rice a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cook the beef slowly and covered. Beef from round is lean and firm. Low, gentle heat in a closely covered pot lets its connective tissue break down slowly, so the meat becomes tender rather than tough and dry.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, rice, tomato, butter, pepper):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, rice, tomato, butter, pepper. 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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