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Beef Bouille

A slow-cooked beef stew with vegetables and a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Beef Bouille

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Rub the salt and pepper into the beef.

Steam the beef

  1. Steam the beef for about 5 hours over water with pepper, salt, marjoram, savory, thyme, onion, carrots, turnips, parsley, celery, and tomatoes.

  2. Once the meat is tender, remove it from the pot.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Strain the gravy, discarding the carrots, then thicken and boil it.

  2. Pour the gravy over the meat just 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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Summer savory + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together214 recipes

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

  3. Marjoram + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Marjoram + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 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

Beef
Provides the main substance of the dish, and long steaming turns its connective tissue tender.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid that flavours the gravy.
Carrots
Contribute sweetness and body to the cooking liquid, then are strained out of the gravy.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and flavour to the cooking liquid, helping shape the gravy.

The step that matters

Steaming the beef. Beef from rump or brisket is tough and needs long, gentle moist heat so collagen breaks down into tender meat. Cutting the heat short leaves the meat chewy, so keep it simmering until it is fork-tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, marjoram, summer savory, thyme, carrot, turnip):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, marjoram, summer savory, thyme, carrot, turnip. 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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