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Beefsteak, Braised

A braised beefsteak cooked with onions, carrots, turnip, celery, parsley, and bay leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beefsteak, Braised

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the beef

  1. Melt butter in a braising pan over medium heat and fry the beefsteak until browned on both sides.

  2. Remove the beefsteak and add flour to the pan, mixing it smoothly with the butter.

  3. Pour in the beef stock and bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the beefsteak to the pan and add the onions, carrots, turnip, celery, parsley, bay leaves, and salt.

  2. Cover and braise until the beef is tender.

  3. Serve in a deep dish with all the vegetables, or for a shooting lunch, serve in the braising pan wrapped in flannel.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 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

Beefsteak
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, moist braising.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Beef stock
Supplies the braising liquid that cooks the meat and carries its flavour into the sauce.
Butter
Carries browning in the pan and adds richness to the sauce.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the braising liquid as they soften.

The step that matters

Cover and braise until the beef is tender. Gentle, covered simmering breaks down tough connective tissue in the meat. Cooking too fast or uncovered can dry the surface and leave the beef tough, so keep the liquid barely simmering.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, beef, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, beef, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley. 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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