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Braised Beef

Braised beef with salt pork, vegetables, and hot water, served hot with horseradish sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Braised Beef

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Braised Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the braise

  1. Cover the bottom of a braising pan with salt pork slices.

  2. Add the chopped carrot, turnip, onion, and celery.

  3. Place the beef on top and dredge it with salt, pepper, and flour.

  4. Cover and cook without water for 30 minutes.

Braise and serve

  1. Add hot water and baste the meat.

  2. Dredge the meat again.

  3. Cook until tender, uncovering for the last 30 minutes.

  4. Serve hot with horseradish sauce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork
Renders fat into the pan, adding richness and flavour to the braise and the vegetables.
Beef
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long slow cooking in liquid.
Flour
Dredging coats the meat, helping it brown and thickening the braising liquid slightly.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and aroma as it softens and flavours the braising liquid.
Onion
Releases sugars and aromatic compounds that build savoury depth in the pan.

The step that matters

Cook without water, covered, for the first 30 minutes. Covered cooking without added liquid lets the meat and vegetables release their own juices and steam, building a concentrated base. Adding water too early would dilute this and slow browning of the flour-dredged meat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, carrot, turnip, celery, beef, pepper, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, carrot, turnip, celery, beef, pepper, 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.

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