Skip to main content
Main

Beef A-LA-daube

A slow‑cooked beef dish with bacon, herbs, and a clarified egg white gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 A-LA-daube

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Lard the round of beef and place it in a Dutch oven.

  2. Cut the meat from a shin of beef or any coarse piece into thin slices.

  3. Layer the beef slices around the sides and over the top with bacon, salt, pepper, onion, thyme, parsley, celery, and small carrot pieces.

Stew and strain

  1. Cover the beef with water and let it stew gently until fully cooked.

  2. Remove the beef and strain the gravy.

Clarify the gravy

  1. Let the gravy cool, then carefully remove the grease.

  2. Beat the egg whites with a little water and add to the gravy.

  3. Boil the gravy until clear, strain it again, and pour it over the beef when cold.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Round of beef
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow stewing.
Bacon
Adds savory fat and smoky flavor that seasons the beef and gravy as it cooks.
Egg whites
Bind impurities in the gravy so they can be strained out, leaving it clear.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the gravy as it stews.
Carrots
Contribute gentle sweetness and body to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Removing the grease before clarifying the gravy. Fat left in the gravy stays cloudy and greasy; chilling lets fat solidify on top so it can be lifted off, and the egg-white clarification then works on a clean liquid.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, thyme, parsley, celery, carrot, egg. 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 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes