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Beef Bouilli

A boiled beef brisket with carrots, turnips, onion, red wine, soy sauce or ketchup, thickened with flour, milk, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Bouilli

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the beef

  1. Place the brisket of beef in a saucepan.

  2. Cover the saucepan with cold water.

  3. Skim the surface as it boils.

  4. Add the diced carrots, turnips, and onion (if using).

  5. Let it simmer for three hours.

  6. Stir in the red wine and soy sauce or tomato ketchup.

  7. Simmer for another hour.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix a little flour, milk, and the egg into the gravy.

  2. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  3. Pour the hot gravy over the meat in the serving dish.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 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

Part of a brisket of beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the broth and gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it heats.
Egg
Enriches the gravy and helps give it body when combined with milk.

The step that matters

Skimming the surface as it boils. Foam and fat rising during the first boil make the broth cloudy and greasy. Skimming them early keeps the liquid clear and the gravy smoother.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, red wine, sauce, flour, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, red wine, sauce, flour, milk. 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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