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Beef Bouilli

A boiled beef stew with carrots, turnips, onions, celery, mustard, ketchup, wine, and a flour‑based gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Beef Bouilli

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Trim off all fat, gristle, and bone from the beef.

  2. Wash the beef and place it in a deep stew pot.

  3. Cover the beef with cold water and bring it to a boil.

  4. Skim off any scum that rises.

Simmer

  1. Add the chopped carrots, turnips, onions, and celery (or celery seed/salt).

  2. Cover the pot and reduce the heat to simmer gently for 4 hours.

  3. One hour before it's done, stir in the mustard, ketchup, and wine if using.

  4. Once the beef is tender, remove it to a deep dish and keep warm.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix the flour with a little cold water and gradually add it to the pot, stirring until thickened.

  2. Boil the mixture.

  3. Pour it over the beef before serving.

  4. Garnish with mixed pickles.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef round
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften during cooking.
Onions
Contribute savory flavor and sweetness to the cooking liquid as they break down.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy when its starch swells with heat.
Ketchup
Adds acidity and sweetness that give the sauce a tangy, rounded flavor.

The step that matters

Gradually adding the flour mixture. Flour must be blended into cold water first and stirred into the hot liquid slowly, then boiled. This keeps it from clumping and lets its starch swell evenly into a smooth gravy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, mustard, ketchup):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, mustard, ketchup. 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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