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Stewed Brisket of Beef

A stew of beef brisket with vegetables, simmered until tender and served with a sauce made from the broth, ketchup, mustard, flour, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Stewed Brisket of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Place the brisket with hard fat into a stewpot with a small amount of water.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim thoroughly.

  3. Add carrots, turnips, onions, celery, and a few peppercorns.

  4. Stew until extremely tender.

Prepare and serve

  1. Remove all flat bones and fat from the soup.

  2. Serve the meat in a tureen with the soup or on a dish garnished with vegetables.

  3. For the sauce, mix ½ pint of the soup with ketchup, mustard, a little flour, butter, and salt.

  4. Boil the sauce together for a few minutes and pour it around the meat.

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

Brisket of beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow stewing.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling with the hot soup liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the sauce.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew until extremely tender. Brisket is a tough cut rich in connective tissue. Slow, gentle simmering over a long time converts collagen into gelatin, which makes the meat tender. Rapid boiling toughens the meat and leaves it stringy.

Swap the onion

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

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

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