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Braised Beef

A slow‑cooked beef dish braised with onions, carrot, turnip, herbs, and tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Braised Beef

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 ↓

Braised Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Lard the beef with salt pork.

Brown the vegetables and beef

  1. Heat a few slices of pork in a braising pan until they begin to fry.

  2. Add the minced onions, carrot, and turnip.

  3. Cook until they start to brown.

  4. Move the vegetables to one side and add the beef.

  5. Dredge the beef with pepper, salt, and flour.

  6. Brown the beef on all sides.

  7. Pour in 1 quart of boiling water.

  8. Add the sweet herbs.

Braise and finish the gravy

  1. Cover the pan and cook slowly for 3.5 hours, basting often.

  2. Remove the beef and add ½ can of tomatoes to the gravy.

  3. Cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Strain the gravy.

  5. Pour it around 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.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef round or rump
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow braising.
Onions
Build the savory base of the gravy as they brown and soften.
Flour
Dredged on the beef, it browns and helps thicken the gravy.
Salt pork
Adds fat for frying the vegetables and larding the meat, enriching flavor and moisture.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Brown the beef on all sides. Searing creates browned flavor through the Maillard reaction. Patient, even browning before adding liquid builds the gravy's color and depth, and crowding the pan would steam the meat instead.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, onion, carrot, turnip, pepper, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, onion, carrot, turnip, pepper, 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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