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Brisket of Beef Stewed

A stew of beef brisket cutlets simmered in a butter‑flour sauce with pepper, salt, mace, and mushroom ketchup or wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Brisket of Beef Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Heat butter or dripping in a frying pan until hot.

  2. Flour the cutlets.

  3. Fry the cutlets until light brown.

  4. Remove the cutlets from the pan.

  5. Add boiling water to the pan.

  6. Boil for a minute.

  7. Strain the liquid into a basin.

Make the gravy

  1. In a stew pan, melt 1 ounce of butter.

  2. Mix in enough flour to dry it up.

  3. Stir the mixture over heat for a few minutes.

  4. Gradually add the strained gravy.

  5. Let the mixture simmer for 10 minutes.

  6. Season with pepper, salt, mace, and mushroom ketchup or wine.

Stew and serve

  1. Strain the sauce over the meat.

  2. Stew gently until warmed through.

  3. Slice the ready-boiled bacon.

  4. Warm the bacon with 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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Brisket of beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through gentle stewing in liquid.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and helps the flour form a smooth roux.
Mushroom ketchup or wine
Adds savoury depth and acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter. Cooking the flour briefly in melted butter before adding liquid lets it swell evenly, so the gravy thickens smoothly instead of becoming lumpy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, flour, pepper, mushroom):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, pepper, mushroom. 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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