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Braised Beef

A slow‑cooked beef dish braised with salt pork, onions, carrot, turnip, herbs, and optional tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Braised Beef

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Braised Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Place 6 slices of salt pork in a braising pan and heat until it begins to fry.

Brown and braise

  1. Add the chopped onions, carrot, and turnip; cook until they begin to brown.

  2. Move the vegetables to one side and add the beef, dredged in salt, pepper, and flour. Brown the beef on all sides, then add boiling water and the bouquet of herbs.

  3. Cover and cook slowly in the oven for 4 hours, basting every 20 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the beef and finish the gravy as for braised tongue, or add tomatoes and cook for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the gravy, pour it around the beef, 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 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

Round beef
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow braising.
Salt pork
Adds fat that fries first, flavouring the pan and the vegetables cooked in it.
Onions
Browned with the carrot and turnip, they add sweetness and depth to the gravy.
Flour
Dredged on the beef, it helps the surface brown and thickens the gravy.

The step that matters

Brown the beef on all sides. Searing creates browned flavour through the Maillard reaction, which gives the gravy its colour and depth. Pale meat yields a flat-tasting braise.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, onion, carrot, turnip, pepper, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, onion, carrot, turnip, pepper, 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.

More braised beef recipes

Roll 13Tongue 13Fillet 11Fillet with Madeira Sauce 6Fillets 5Ribs 5 See all 61 →

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