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Braised Beef

A slow-cooked beef dish braised with lemon, oil, salt, peppercorns, herbs, onions, carrots, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Braised Beef

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 ↓

Braised Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Trim the beef into a smooth shape.

  2. Lard the beef with salt pork on each side.

  3. Marinate the beef for 12 hours in lemon juice, salad oil, salt, peppercorns, thyme, and parsley.

  4. Brown the meat well on all sides in a frying pan.

Braise

  1. Place the meat in a braising pan on a bed of chopped onion, carrot, and parsley.

  2. Pour in boiling water to half cover the meat.

  3. Cook in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 2 hours or until very tender, turning once.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the meat to a hot platter.

  2. Skim the fat from the gravy and remove the vegetables.

  3. Thicken the gravy with flour and strain it over the meat.

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. 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
The main cut, which becomes tender through long, slow braising in liquid.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour as it melts into the lean beef during cooking.
Lemon juice
Its acidity helps tenderise the meat during the long marinating time.
Onion, carrot, and parsley
Flavour the braising liquid and gravy as they cook beneath the meat.
Flour
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the meat.

The step that matters

Brown the meat well on all sides. Browning creates deep flavour through the Maillard reaction, and crowding the pan or leaving pale patches gives a weaker, greyer gravy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, thyme, parsley, onion, carrot, flour):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, thyme, parsley, onion, carrot, 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.

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