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Stewed Brisket of Beef

A slow‑cooked beef brisket with vegetables, seasoned with salt, pepper, catsup, and served with capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 145 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Brisket of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the brisket

  1. Place the brisket in a kettle and cover it with water.

  2. Skim off the scum as it rises.

  3. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

  4. Remove the brisket and brown it in butter in a skillet.

  5. Return the browned brisket to the pot and simmer for 2 more hours.

  6. Add water if it boils away.

Add the vegetables and finish

  1. Add the chopped carrot, turnips, onion, cloves, salt, and pepper.

  2. Half an hour before serving, add catsup.

  3. To serve, place the beef on a dish and sprinkle capers over it.

  4. The cooking liquid can be served as soup; if not brown enough, add burnt sugar.

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. Turnip + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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
Is the main cut of meat that becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Butter
Browns the seared brisket in a skillet, adding color and a roasted flavor.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the cooking liquid as it softens.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma to the cooking liquid.
Catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the sauce in the final half hour.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny accent to the sliced beef at serving.

The step that matters

Simmer gently and skim the scum. A gentle simmer keeps the connective tissue in the brisket breaking down slowly without toughening the meat. A rolling boil makes the meat tough and cloudies the liquid, so skimming off the scum as it rises keeps the broth clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, turnip, clove, pepper, capers):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, turnip, clove, pepper, capers. 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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