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Fricasseed Beef

A beef fricassée cooked with butter and water, finished with a brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Fricasseed Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Heat a skillet until very hot and grease it.

  2. Brown the meat on both sides.

Braise

  1. Pour boiling water over the meat and cover tightly.

  2. Cook until tender, allowing the water to boil out.

  3. Add butter and let the meat brown again.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the meat to a platter.

  2. Make a nice brown gravy.

  3. Serve with it.

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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

End pieces of steak
Tough cuts that become tender and flavourful when browned and slowly cooked in liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the meat brown again at the end of cooking.
Boiling water
Creates steam and liquid that softens the meat during covered cooking and forms the base for gravy.

The step that matters

Cook until tender, allowing the water to boil out. If the water boils away too early the meat can scorch or stay tough, while too much liquid steams it instead of letting it brown. Gentle, controlled cooking lets the collagen break down so the meat becomes tender.

“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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