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Bouilli Beef

A boiled beef dish simmered with carrots, turnips, onions, wine, mustard, soy sauce, and garnished with pickled cucumbers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bouilli Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the beef

  1. Place the brisket in a saucepan and cover with cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil, skimming off the scum.

  3. Add the diced carrots, turnips, and onion, along with the clove-studded onion.

  4. Simmer for three hours.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Stir in the red wine, mixed mustard, and soy sauce, then simmer for an additional hour.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour.

  3. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  4. Pour the gravy over the meat.

  5. Serve very hot, garnished with finely chopped pickled cucumbers.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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 meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy as it simmers.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy that coats the meat.
Carrots
Contribute sweetness and body to the broth as they cook down.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and soften into the broth during the long simmer.
Mixed mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the beef and gravy.

The step that matters

Skimming off the scum. Skimming as the water comes to a boil removes coagulated proteins and impurities, keeping the broth clear and clean-tasting instead of cloudy or bitter.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, onion, red wine, mustard, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, onion, red wine, mustard, 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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