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Braised Beef a LA Francaise

Braised beef with salt pork, herbs, and sauce, served with stuffed cabbages.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Braised Beef a LA Francaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Lard the beef with salt pork, parsley, and garlic.

  2. Place the beef in a saucepan with salt pork or fat at the bottom.

  3. Add the onion, carrot, thyme, bay leaf, salt, and pepper.

Braise and serve

  1. Cover and brown the beef on both sides for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the white broth and Universal sauce, then cook for 1 hour.

  3. Skim off the fat before serving.

  4. Serve the beef on a dish garnished with stuffed cabbages.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  5. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Rump piece of beef
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during long, slow cooking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour that moistens the beef as it cooks.
White broth
Provides liquid for braising, keeping the beef moist and building flavour in the sauce.
Universal sauce
Adds body and savoury depth to the braising liquid.
Onion
Releases sweetness and aroma into the braising liquid as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cover and brown the beef on both sides. Browning builds deep flavour through the Maillard reaction on the meat's surface. Searing both sides well before adding liquid gives the braise a richer, more savoury taste.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, parsley, garlic, onion, carrot, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, parsley, garlic, onion, carrot, thyme. 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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