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Bouilli Beef

A boiled beef dish seasoned with spices, cloves, mace, celery, carrots, allspice, pepper, and served with a gravy and claret wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bouilli Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Ask the butcher to remove the bone from the beef.

  2. Ask the butcher to insert an onion.

  3. Rub the beef with various spices and let it sit for a couple of days to tenderize.

  4. Remove the onion.

Boil

  1. Place the beef in a pot of water to boil.

  2. Skim off any grease that rises to the top while boiling.

  3. Boil slowly for 3 to 4 hours.

  4. After 2 hours, add cloves, mace, celery tops, sliced carrots, whole onion, allspice, and black pepper.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Remove about 1 pint of gravy.

  2. Mix the gravy with 1 pint of claret wine.

  3. Thicken the mixture with browned flour.

  4. Add capers.

  5. Pour the sauce over the beef.

  6. Serve.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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
Forms the main body of the dish; long slow boiling turns its connective tissue tender.
Browned flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the beef and carries the flavour.
Claret wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy-based sauce.
Gravy
Forms the base of the sauce, adding savoury body and moisture.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid as it simmers.

The step that matters

Skim off grease while boiling. Fat that rises during a long boil makes the broth greasy and dulls the sauce if left on the surface. Removing it keeps the liquid clean-tasting.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, clove, celery, carrot, allspice, pepper. 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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