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Stewed Brisket of Beef

A slow‑cooked beef brisket stew with carrots, turnips, onions, celery, and a tomato‑mustard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Stewed Brisket of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Place the brisket with hard fat into a stewpot with water and bring to a boil.

  2. Skim the surface thoroughly.

  3. Add carrots, turnips, onions, celery, and peppercorns.

  4. Stew until the meat is extremely tender.

Prepare the sauce

  1. Remove all flat bones and fat from the soup.

  2. Mix ½ pint of the soup with catsup, mustard, flour, butter, and salt to make the sauce.

  3. Boil the sauce for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup and meat in a tureen or separately, garnished with vegetables.

  2. Pour the sauce around the meat.

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 + 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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Brisket of beef with hard fat
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long slow stewing.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the soup as they soften in the liquid.
Onions
Add savory depth and aroma to the stewed broth.
Flour
Thickens the soup into a sauce as it is heated.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Skim the surface thoroughly. Removing foam and fat that rise as the liquid first boils keeps the broth clear and prevents a greasy, cloudy soup.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, flour, butter. 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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