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Besf, French, Stewed

A slow‑cooked beef stew with bacon, stock, wine, spices, and a clarified stock jelly garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Besf, French, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Beat the rump steak with a rolling pin to tenderize it.

  2. Lard the steak thoroughly with strips of bacon.

Stew the beef

  1. Place the steak in a stewpan with stock, spices, salt, garlic, thyme, parsley, and white wine.

  2. Stew gently for 4 to 5 hours.

Make the jelly and serve

  1. Remove the meat, glaze it, and set aside to cool.

  2. Reduce the stock until it jellies.

  3. Clear the stock with egg white, flavor with lemon, and strain through a jelly bag into a pie dish.

  4. Serve the meat cold, garnished with jelly cut into squares or diamonds.

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

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

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

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

  4. Thyme + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,503 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Garlic + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,044 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Rump steak
Forms the main body of the stew and becomes tender during long, gentle cooking.
Strips of bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that moistens the lean beef as it cooks.
Good stock
Provides the cooking liquid that later reduces and sets into a clear savory jelly.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich, meaty flavor of the stew.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma that mellows and deepens during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Reduce the stock until it jellies. Stock must be reduced enough for its natural gelatin to set when cold. Too little reduction leaves a runny liquid, while over-reducing can make it overly salty and concentrated.

Swap the garlic

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

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

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