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Sauce

Italian Sauce for Boiled Beef

A sauce made with mushrooms, parsley, shallot, salt, pepper, Espagnole sauce, and broth for boiled beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Italian Sauce for Boiled Beef

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the chopped mushrooms, parsley, shallot, and bay leaf in a stewpan, then add salt and pepper to taste.

  2. Gently stew the mixture with enough Espagnole sauce to moisten.

  3. Thin the sauce to a proper consistency with strong broth.

  4. Strain the sauce before serving.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Release moisture and earthy flavour as they stew, adding body to the sauce.
Shallot
Provides an aromatic base that turns mellow and slightly sweet when stewed.
Espagnole sauce
Supplies the brown sauce base, giving the sauce its body and savoury depth.

The step that matters

Gently stew the mixture with Espagnole sauce. Gentle heat lets the mushrooms and shallot soften and release their flavour without scorching on the base of the stewpan. Too much heat can burn the solids and give a bitter taste, while too little leaves the sauce raw-tasting.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, shallot, pepper, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, shallot, pepper, sauce. 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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