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Boiled Brisket of Beef, a L'anglaise

A boiled beef brisket cooked with carrots, onions, celery, and served with suet dumplings, gravy, and piquante sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Boiled Brisket of Beef, a L'anglaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brisket

  1. Soak the brisket of beef in salt for about a week or ten days.

  2. Wash the brisket of beef in cold water.

  3. Place the brisket of beef in a large oval braising pan.

  4. Garnish the brisket with carrots, onions, and celery.

  5. Add enough cold water to nearly fill the pan.

Boil

  1. Bring the water to a boil.

  2. Skim off the scum that rises to the surface.

  3. Reduce the heat.

  4. Let the brisket gently boil for 4 to 5 hours, depending on its size.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the cooked brisket to an earthenware dish.

  2. Trim the brisket.

  3. Glaze the brisket.

  4. Garnish the brisket with boiled turnips and carrots shaped like pears or leaves.

  5. Add small suet dumplings at each end of the brisket.

  6. Pour some gravy under the brisket.

  7. Serve the brisket with piquante sauce on the side.

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 + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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
Provides the main meat; its fat covering keeps the lean meat moist during long gentle boiling.
Suet
Adds richness and fat to the dumplings, giving them a tender, light texture.
Onions
Add aromatic flavour to the cooking liquid as the brisket simmers.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid and make a colourful garnish.

The step that matters

Gentle boiling after skimming. Once the water boils, the heat must be reduced so it only simmers. A hard boil toughens the meat's proteins and breaks the meat apart, while slow simmering over hours softens connective tissue and keeps the brisket tender.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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