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Bouilli Beef

A slow-cooked beef stew with celery, carrots, cloves, soy sauce, and browned flour or sugar for gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot 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

  1. Wash the beef thoroughly in cold water.

  2. Place the beef in a pot with fresh cold water and add salt.

Cook the beef

  1. Boil slowly for 5 to 6 hours, skimming regularly.

  2. Add celery, carrots, cloves, and soy sauce. Cover the meat and continue cooking.

Finish the gravy

  1. Brown the gravy with browned flour or 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.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Round beef
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during long, slow boiling.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavour to the cooking liquid that carries into the broth and gravy.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aromatic flavour to the cooking liquid.
Soy sauce
Adds savoury, salty depth and colour to the cooking liquid and gravy.
Browned flour or sugar
Browns the gravy and adds colour, with flour also thickening it.

The step that matters

Boil slowly and skim regularly. A gentle simmer rather than a hard boil keeps the meat tender and the broth clear. Skimming removes foam and fat that would otherwise cloud the liquid and taste greasy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, carrot, sauce, flour. 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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