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Fricasseed Beef

A beef stew with flour, vinegar, mustard, fruit jelly, butter, spices, grated turnip, mashed potato, onion, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Fricasseed Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Take a piece of beef from the fore quarter and cook it in just enough water to evaporate during cooking.

  2. When the beef is half done, add salt and black pepper to season.

  3. If the water does not boil away quickly, drain it and let the beef fry for 15 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. Mix flour with the fat from the beef, then pour the hot juice of the meat over it.

  2. For additional flavor, add pepper vinegar, mustard, fruit jelly, butter, salt, celery seed, grated turnip, mashed potato, minced onion, and parsley.

  3. Boil the mixture and 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.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 the fat and juices that form the base of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the cooking juices into a smooth gravy as it heats.
Grated turnip
Adds moisture and body, and a mild sweetness as it cooks down.
Mashed potato
Adds starch that helps thicken and give the gravy a fuller texture.
Pepper vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the beef and fat.

The step that matters

Mix the flour with the fat before adding the hot juice. Flour stirred into fat first coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly; adding it to liquid directly forms lumps that do not smooth out well when boiled.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, flour, vinegar, mustard, butter, celery):

  1. Horseradishfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, flour, vinegar, mustard, butter, celery. 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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