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Braised Beef

Braised beef with pork, onions, carrot, turnip, and optional tomatoes, simmered in water and herbs, served with a corn starch gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 the pan

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

  2. Lard the beef with salt pork.

  3. Place six slices of pork in the bottom of a pan.

  4. Once the pork begins to fry, add onions, carrot, and turnip.

  5. Cook the vegetables until browned.

  6. Move the vegetables to the side.

Braise the beef

  1. Add the beef, dredged in flour, salt, and pepper.

  2. Brown the beef on all sides.

  3. Add boiling water.

  4. Add the bouquet of herbs.

  5. Cover the pan.

  6. Cook slowly for 1 hour, basting every 20 minutes.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Mix corn starch with a little cold water.

  2. Stir the mixture into the boiling gravy.

  3. Boil the gravy for 1 minute.

  4. Strain the gravy.

  5. (Optional) Add tomatoes to the gravy. Cook the gravy with tomatoes for 10 minutes. Strain the gravy again.

  6. Pour the gravy around the beef.

  7. Garnish with parsley.

  8. 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 + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together794 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Slow braising in covered liquid turns the tough cut tender and moist.
Flour
Dusting the beef lightly helps it brown and gives the gravy body.
Salt pork
Fat renders into the pan, adding richness and flavor to the braise.
Onions
Browning them builds sweetness and savory depth in the gravy.
Corn starch
Thickens the boiling liquid into a smooth, glossy gravy.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and color to the gravy when used.

The step that matters

Brown the beef on all sides. Browning builds deep flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat gives a flat gravy, and the surface must be dry and hot for good color.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, carrot, turnip, flour, pepper, corn):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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