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Braised Beef

Braised beef with salt pork, onions, carrot, turnip, herbs, and optional tomatoes, simmered slowly in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Braised Beef

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 ↓

Braised Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the beef

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Lard the beef with the salt pork.

  3. In a braising pan, place 6 slices of salt pork and heat until frying.

  4. Add the onions, carrot, and turnip.

  5. Cook the vegetables until they begin to brown.

  6. Move the vegetables to one side.

  7. Add the beef, dredged in salt, pepper, and flour.

  8. Brown the beef on all sides.

Braise

  1. Add the boiling water and bouquet of herbs.

  2. Cover the pan.

  3. Cook slowly for 4 hours, basting every 20 minutes.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the beef from the pan.

  2. Thicken the gravy.

  3. Add the tomatoes to the gravy.

  4. Cook for 10 minutes.

  5. Strain the gravy.

  6. Pour the strained gravy around the meat before serving.

  7. Pour the gravy over the meat.

  8. Serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 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

Beef round or rump
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, moist braising.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the pan and the lardcoated beef.
Onions
Caramelize while browning, adding sweetness and depth to the gravy.
Flour
Coats the beef to promote browning and later thickens the gravy.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the gravy, if used.

The step that matters

Brown the beef on all sides. Browning creates flavor through the Maillard reaction, which builds the base of the gravy. Pale meat yields a flat, less savory braise.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, onion, carrot, turnip, pepper, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, onion, carrot, turnip, 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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