Skip to main content
Main

Bouilli Beef

A boiled beef dish with carrots, turnips, onions, red wine, mustard, soy sauce, pickled cucumbers, and a flour-thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bouilli Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Place the brisket in a saucepan and cover with cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil, skimming off the scum.

Simmer and flavour

  1. Add the diced carrots, turnips, and onion, along with the clove-studded onion.

  2. Simmer for three hours.

  3. Stir in the red wine, mixed mustard, and soy sauce.

  4. Simmer for an additional hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Finely chop the pickled cucumbers.

  2. Sprinkle the chopped cucumbers over the dish.

  3. Stir a little flour into the gravy.

  4. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  5. Pour the gravy over the meat before serving hot.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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

Brisket of beef
Long simmering turns the tough connective tissue tender and gives the meat its rich flavour.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth to the braising liquid, rounding out the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat rather than running off.
Carrots
Release sweetness into the cooking liquid, balancing the savoury broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum after boiling. Foam that rises during the first boil carries impurities and proteins; removing it keeps the broth clear and prevents off flavours from settling into the gravy.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, onion, red wine, mustard, sauce. 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.

More boiled beef recipes

Tongue 58Salted 11Round 9French 7Joint 6with Vegetables 4 See all 84 →

You might also like

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