Skip to main content
Main

Fricassee of Beef

A dish of sliced roast beef simmered in a thickened broth with ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fricassee of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cold roast beef thinly, removing all fat and skin.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine good broth with flour and butter to thicken.

  2. Add a little ketchup to the sauce.

  3. Stir in the sliced beef and heat through.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Beef + ketchuptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + ketchuptop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce that clings to the beef.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend into the broth.
Cold roast beef
Provides the main protein, which warms through in the sauce.
Good broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries its flavor.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to season the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the sliced beef and heat through. Heating the thin, already-cooked beef gently in the thickened sauce keeps it tender. Boiling it hard can toughen the meat and cause the sauce to break or become grainy.

“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.

More fricassee recipes

Chicken 369Oyster 79Rabbit 73Veal 52Oysters 35Tripe 31 See all 8 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes