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Beef A-LA-daube

Beef à la Daube is a braised beef dish with bacon, onions, herbs, carrots, celery, and a clear egg‑white gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Beef A-LA-daube

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Lard the round of beef.

  2. Place the larded beef in a Dutch oven.

  3. Cut the meat from a shin of beef or any coarse piece into thin slices.

  4. Surround the beef with bacon slices, salt, pepper, onion, thyme, parsley, celery, and small carrot pieces.

  5. Cover the beef with water.

  6. Let it stew gently until perfectly done.

  7. Remove the beef.

Clarify the gravy

  1. Strain the gravy.

  2. Let the gravy cool.

  3. Carefully remove the grease from the gravy.

  4. Beat the egg whites.

  5. Mix in a little water.

  6. Add the egg white mixture to the gravy.

  7. Boil until clear.

  8. Strain the gravy again.

Serve

  1. Pour it over the beef when cold.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Round of beef
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the beef and the surrounding gravy.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the stewing liquid.
Carrots
Contribute sweetness and body to the gravy as they cook.
Egg whites
Bind impurities in the gravy so they can be strained out, leaving it clear.

The step that matters

Boil until clear. Egg whites must be added to cool, skimmed gravy and heated so they coagulate and trap particles; boiling too vigorously can break up the clumps and cloud the gravy again.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, thyme, parsley, celery, carrot, egg):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, thyme, parsley, celery, carrot, egg. 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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