Skip to main content
Main

Beef with Broth

A beef stew simmered with barley, oatmeal, parsley, thyme, onions or leeks, and seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 with Broth

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, combine the beef and enough water to cover it.

  2. Add the barley, oatmeal, parsley, thyme, onions or leeks, and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for several hours until the beef is tender.

  4. Strain the broth and serve the beef with the liquid.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Barley + thymetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together189 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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
Provides the main meat and rich flavor as it simmers into the broth.
Barley
Adds body and a soft, chewy texture as it cooks in the liquid.
Oatmeal
Thickens the broth slightly as its starch releases during simmering.
Onions or leeks
Contribute savory sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering until the beef is tender. Beef is tough collagen-rich muscle that needs long, gentle simmering to break down. A hard boil toughens the meat and can cloud the broth, so keep the liquid at a low simmer.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, barley, parsley, thyme, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes