Spiced Beef

History

This is Eliza Acton's receipt for "Spiced Beef," printed in Modern Cookery for Private Families, the English domestic cookbook she first published with Longmans in London in 1845. (The digitized copy consulted for the recipe text is an 1882 Longmans reprint of the same work.)

Acton subtitles the receipt "Good and wholesome" and gives it as a dry-spice cure: for twelve pounds of the round, rump, or thick flank of beef, the meat is rubbed with pounded mace, ground black pepper, cloves, one small nutmeg, cayenne, and brown sugar and left three days; fine salt is then added and the beef is rubbed and turned once every twenty-four hours for twelve more days; it is washed but not soaked, bound into form, and simmered "quite softly" for four and a half hours in beef broth with a small onion, a faggot of thyme and parsley, and carrots. In her closing note she presents it as an alternative to "the hard, bright-coloured beef which is cured with large quantities of salt and saltpetre," and adds that a little saltpetre may still be mixed with the spices "when the appearance of the meat is much considered".

Acton writes that she gives this receipt "exactly as we have often had it used", but she names no earlier cook, household, region, or written source for it. Beyond the printed receipt itself, the historical record consulted here does not document where this particular spiced-beef preparation originated, who ate it, or that it carried any social status. (The withdrawn account's claim tracing the recipe to medieval European "poudre" spice blends is not supported by any source opened here and is omitted.)

Ingredients

• 12 lbs beef round, rump, or thick flank
• 1 large teaspoonful freshly-pounded mace
• 1 large teaspoonful ground black pepper
• 2 large teaspoonfuls cloves
• 1 nutmeg, small
• 1/4 teaspoonful cayenne
• 7 oz brown sugar
• 1/2 lb fine salt
• 1.5 pints good beef broth
• 1 small onion
• 1 bunch thyme and parsley
• 2 large carrots
• 2 or 3 oz juniper-berries

Instructions

1. Grind all the spices (mace, black pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and cayenne) to the finest powder.
2. Mix them well with the brown sugar.
3. Rub the beef thoroughly with this spice-sugar mixture and let it lie for three days.
4. After three days, add the fine salt and continue rubbing and turning the beef once every twenty-four hours for twelve more days.
5. Just wash the beef, but do not soak it.
6. Skewer or bind it into good form.
7. Put it into a stewpan or saucepan nearly of its size and pour in the beef broth.
8. When it begins to boil, take off the scum.
9. Throw in the small onion, the faggot of thyme and parsley, and the carrots.
10. Let it simmer quite softly for four and a half hours.
11. If not wanted to serve hot, leave it in its own liquor until it is nearly cold.