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Braised Beef

Braised beef with onions, carrots, turnips, and herbs simmered in a savory gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Braised Beef

Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Run several strips of fat pork through the lean part of the beef with a large larding needle.

  2. Bind the beef into shape with tape.

  3. Place the beef in a braising pan or a pot with a close-fitting lid.

Braise

  1. Add butter, pepper, and salt to the pot.

  2. Cover the pot.

  3. Cook over low heat for 30 minutes, stirring twice.

  4. Add water to the pot.

  5. Cook very slowly for 1.5 hours.

  6. Add onions and carrots around the meat.

  7. Make a bouquet with parsley, bay leaves, and thyme.

  8. After 30 minutes, add turnips.

  9. Let it stew gently for another 1.5 hours, totaling 4 hours of cooking.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the meat, trim it, and arrange the vegetables around it.

  2. Add ice water to the gravy to skim off grease.

  3. Stir in brown thickening and sugar.

  4. Stir gently.

  5. Pour the gravy around the meat through a strainer.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 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

Beef
Provides the main body of the dish; slow braising turns its connective tissue tender and juicy.
Pork fat (in the method)
Larded strips baste the lean beef from within, adding moisture and richness as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the braising liquid and helps flavor the gravy.
Onions
Release sweetness and aroma into the braising liquid as they cook slowly.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the vegetables and gravy during the long braise.
Brown thickening
Thickens the gravy and gives it a deep brown color.

The step that matters

Cook very slowly over low heat. Gentle, prolonged heat breaks down the connective tissue in tough cuts like rump or chuck into gelatin. Rushing with high heat toughens the meat and can scorch the liquid.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, pepper, carrot, parsley, thyme, turnip. 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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