Skip to main content
Main

Beef Steak Stew with Jelly

A beef and veal stew thickened with a clear jelly made from the broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 ↓

Beef Steak Stew with Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Pound the steak to make it soft and lard it thoroughly.

  2. Place the steak in a stew-pan with equal parts of white wine and water.

  3. Add the veal slices and season with spice, salt, garlic, thyme, and parsley.

  4. Simmer over a steady fire for four to five hours.

Make the jelly

  1. Remove the meat and strain the broth through a sieve.

  2. Boil the strained broth until it becomes a jelly.

  3. For a clear jelly, beat the egg whites with stock broth and mix into the boiling jelly.

  4. Boil for seven to eight minutes, then add lemon.

  5. Strain the jelly through a fine cotton strainer without squeezing the cloth.

  6. Let the filtered jelly set in a cold place until solid, then cut into pieces and arrange around the meat.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Garlic + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,608 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Gather impurities during boiling so the jelly becomes clear.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the braising liquid.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness to the jelly.
Veal
Adds meaty flavour and gelatin-rich body to the broth.

The step that matters

Straining the jelly without squeezing the cloth. Squeezing the cloth pushes cloudy particles through the filter, which spoils the clarity of the jelly. Letting it drip slowly keeps the finished jelly clear and bright.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, white wine, thyme, parsley, egg, lemon):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, white wine, thyme, parsley, egg, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes