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Brisket of Beef Stewed

A stew of brisket cooked with Spanish onions and Spanish sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brisket of Beef Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the bone from the brisket of beef and tie it up.

Braise and glaze

  1. Place the brisket in a brown braise and cook for about 5 hours.

  2. In a stewpan, add the Spanish onions and some second stock, then boil down to a glaze.

  3. Remove the beef, trim it neatly, and glaze it.

Serve

  1. Serve with Spanish sauce on the dish, the glazed onions around the dish, and the beef in the middle.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Beef + saucetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,650 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Onion and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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 of beef
Provides the main body of the dish; slow braising tenderises its connective tissue.
Spanish onions
Reduced to a glaze, they add sweetness and savoury depth to the dish.
Second stock
Moistens the onions and reduces to a glaze that coats them.

The step that matters

Boil the onions down to a glaze. Boiling the stock and onions until the liquid reduces and turns syrupy requires watching closely; if it reduces too far the onions can scorch, and if not far enough the glaze stays thin and does not coat the onions.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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