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Braised Beef

A slow‑cooked beef dish braised with salt pork, pork slices, onions, carrot, turnip, herbs, and optional tomatoes.

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

  1. Lard the beef with the salt pork.

  2. Place the pork slices in a braising pan and heat until they begin to fry.

  3. Add the onions, carrot, and turnip; cook until they start to brown.

  4. Move the vegetables to one side and add the beef, dredged in salt, pepper, and flour.

  5. Brown the beef on all sides.

Braise and serve

  1. Add boiling water and the bouquet of herbs; cover and cook slowly in the oven at 300°F (150°C) for 4 hours, basting every 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the beef, thicken the gravy, pour it over the meat, and serve.

  3. Alternatively, add the tomatoes to the gravy, cook for 10 minutes, strain, and pour around the meat before serving.

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
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow braising.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour that enriches the braising liquid and the meat.
Flour
Coats the beef so it browns well and helps thicken the gravy.
Onions
Soften and brown in the fat, building sweetness and depth for the gravy.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and colour to the gravy when used as the optional sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the beef on all sides. Browning creates flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale, steamed meat gives a flat gravy, so the surface needs enough hot fat and space to colour properly.

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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