Skip to main content
Main

Brisket of Beef with Sauerkraut

A slow‑cooked beef brisket served with sauerkraut, apple, sugar, and flour.

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

Why it works: Pepper and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,800 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brisket of Beef with Sauerkraut

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the brisket and season it well with salt, pepper, and ginger.

  2. Let it stand overnight.

Cook

  1. Cover the brisket with boiling water and cook slowly for about 2 hours.

  2. Wash the sauerkraut and add it to the meat along with the apple.

  3. Place the kettle in the oven and cook for 2 hours longer or until the meat is tender.

Finish the sauce

  1. Remove the meat to a platter and add sugar, flour dissolved in a little water, and adjust seasoning if necessary.

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. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + appletop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Ginger + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Brisket
Long slow cooking breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and moist.
Sauerkraut
Its acidity balances the rich beef and adds a tangy flavour to the cooking liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the sourness of the sauerkraut.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a looser sauce when stirred in.
Apple
Adds natural sweetness and fruity aroma that softens the sauerkraut's sharpness.

The step that matters

Slow cooking the brisket until tender. Brisket is a tough cut full of connective tissue. Cooking it gently in liquid for a long time converts that collagen to gelatin; if the heat is too high or the time too short, the meat stays tough and dry.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, ginger, sugar, flour):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ginger, sugar, 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.

You might also like

Apple SoupApple Soup33 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes