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Portugal Beef

A beef rib dish with butter, suet, chestnuts, anchovy, onion, pepper, stock, gherkin, flour, browning, sea salt, and lemon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Portugal Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the bone from the rib of beef and cut it across.

  2. Heat butter in a pan and fry the thin part of the beef.

  3. Stuff the thick end with suet, boiled chestnuts, anchovy, onion, and pepper.

  4. Stew the beef in good stock until tender.

  5. Place the stewed part on a dish.

  6. Cut the fried part in two.

  7. Place each half of the fried part on each side of the stewed part.

Make the gravy

  1. Strain the gravy.

  2. Add chopped gherkin and boiled chestnuts to the gravy.

  3. Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour.

  4. Add browning to the gravy.

  5. Boil the gravy.

  6. Season the gravy with salt.

  7. Pour the gravy over the beef.

Garnish

  1. Garnish with lemon.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Chestnut + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together517 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Chestnut + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together696 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing and browns when fried.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the stuffed meat moist during cooking.
Butter
Fat for frying the beef and, rolled in flour, thickens the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when cooked with butter into a roux-like paste.
Boiled chestnuts
Add a soft, starchy texture to the stuffing and gravy.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth to the stuffing and gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour. Flour must be cooked in fat, and the gravy kept at a boil, so the starch swells and thickens smoothly without a raw floury taste or lumps.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, chestnut, anchovy, onion, pepper, flour):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, chestnut, anchovy, onion, pepper, flour. 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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