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Braised Beef

A braised beef dish cooked with vegetables, salt pork, and cloves, finished with a brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Braised Beef

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Braised Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Wipe the beef carefully with a damp cloth.

  2. Brown the beef in beef suet.

Braise

  1. Place the beef in a roaster and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Sprinkle chopped carrot, onion, celery, and parsley over the beef.

  3. Lay the slices of salt pork and cloves on top.

  4. Cover and cook until the beef is tender.

  5. Use the juices to make a nice brown gravy.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and rich through slow, moist cooking.
Beef suet
Fat used for browning the beef, building colour and flavour on the surface.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour that seasons the meat and juices as it cooks.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aromatic flavour to the braising liquid and gravy.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the braising liquid and gravy.

The step that matters

Brown the beef in beef suet. Searing the surface over high heat creates browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pat the meat dry first, since surface moisture steams the meat instead of browning it.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, carrot, onion, celery, parsley, pork):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, carrot, onion, celery, parsley, pork. 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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