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Of Boiled Beef

A boiled beef dish simmered with onions, butter, wine, and seasonings, served with carrots and potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Of Boiled Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Slice the onions finely and fry them lightly in butter.

  2. Add the stock and thicken with flour, stirring for one minute.

  3. Pour in the white wine and season with pepper, salt, and the bay leaf.

  4. Add a few drops of caramel for color.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the sliced beef and simmer for twenty minutes.

  2. Remove the bay leaf and serve on a hot dish with baked carrots and potatoes.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, forming the base flavor of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while gently cooking the onions.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sauce.
Cold boiled beef
Provides the main protein, which warms through and absorbs the sauce while simmering.
Caramel
Deepens the sauce's color with a slight toasted sweetness.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour, stirring for one minute. Flour must be stirred into the hot stock so it disperses evenly; if it is added in clumps or not stirred, it forms lumps instead of a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, pepper, beef, flour, white wine, potato):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, pepper, beef, flour, white wine, potato. 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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