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Bouilli Beef

A boiled beef dish with onions, peppers, turnip, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, celery, cloves, and served with pickles and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Bouilli Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the bone from the beef and wash it in cold water.

  2. Tie the beef up nicely and place it in a large pot filled with cold water.

  3. Add a bone under the beef to prevent burning.

  4. Add onions, red pepper, turnip, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, celery, cloves, and salt.

Cook and make the gravy

  1. Bring to a boil, skimming off the scum, until the water reduces to one-third.

  2. Set aside to stew gradually.

  3. When nearly done, remove the meat and take off the fat.

  4. In a frying pan, brown some butter and flour carefully, then stir it into the gravy.

  5. Return the beef to the pot for an additional 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with finely chopped pickles and a little tomato ketchup.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef rump
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Butter and flour
Browned together they form a roux that thickens and deepens the flavour of the gravy.
Potatoes
Starch that softens during simmering and helps thicken the broth as it cooks.
Onions
Build savoury, sweet depth as they soften and release flavour into the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the broth as they cook.

The step that matters

Skimming off the scum while bringing to a boil. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise to the surface; removing it keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting. Boiling hard can cloud the liquid and toughen the meat, so a gentle simmer is better after the initial skim.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, pepper, turnip, carrot, potato, celery):

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

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