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Brisket of Beef Stewed

A slow‑cooked stew of beef brisket with carrots, turnips, onions, and a seasoned gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Brisket of Beef Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Rub the beef with vinegar and salt before cooking.

  2. Place the beef in a stew pan and cover with stock or water.

Simmer

  1. Simmer for 1 hour, skimming regularly.

  2. Add the carrots, turnips, and onions, and simmer for an additional 2 hours until the meat is tender.

  3. Remove the bones from the meat.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Boil the gravy with flour and butter to thicken.

  2. Season the gravy with catsup, allspice, and mace.

  3. Pour some gravy over the brisket and serve the rest in a separate dish.

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. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together445 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Beef
Forms the main body of the stew and becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Vinegar
Acidity that helps tenderise and season the meat before cooking.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the stew as they soften during simmering.
Turnips
Add mild flavour and body to the stew as they soften during simmering.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma to the stew as they cook down.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat and vegetables.

The step that matters

Simmer for 1 hour, skimming regularly. Skimming removes foam and fat that rise to the surface, keeping the stock clear and the gravy from tasting greasy or cloudy. Keep the heat low so the meat simmers gently rather than boils, which keeps it tender.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

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