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Braised Beef

A slow‑cooked beef roast with butter, salt, pepper, water, onions, carrots, turnips, herbs, and a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 using a large larding needle.

  2. Bind the beef into shape with tape.

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

Braise

  1. Add butter, black pepper, and coarse sea salt to the pot.

  2. Cover the pot.

  3. Cook over low heat for 30 minutes.

  4. Stir the contents twice.

  5. Add water to the pot.

  6. Cook very slowly for 1.5 hours.

  7. Add button onions and carrots around the meat.

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

  9. Add the bouquet to the pot.

  10. Add turnips to the pot.

  11. Let it stew gently for another 1.5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the meat from the pot.

  2. Trim the meat.

  3. Arrange the vegetables around the meat.

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

  5. Stir in brown thickening and sugar.

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
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow braising.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the braising liquid and gravy.
Pork fat strips (in the method)
Larded into the lean beef to add moisture and flavor during long cooking.
Button onions
Soften and release sweetness into the braising liquid.
Carrots
Soften during stewing and add sweetness to the gravy.
Turnips
Become tender in the stew and add mild sweetness to the vegetables.

The step that matters

Cook very slowly for 1.5 hours. Slow, gentle heat breaks down the connective tissue in the tough cut of beef into tender meat. Boiling hard would toughen the muscle fibers and dry the meat out.

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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