Skip to main content
Main

Braised Beef, Flemish Style

Braised beef with cabbage, carrots, turnips, potatoes, bacon, and small sausages cooked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Braised Beef, Flemish Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Partially boil the beef until tender.

  2. In a large pot, braise the beef until browned.

Braise with vegetables

  1. Add chopped cabbage, sliced carrots, turnips, and potatoes around the beef.

  2. Add diced bacon and small sausages on top.

  3. Cover and cook until the vegetables are tender and the beef is fully cooked.

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. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Cabbage + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,505 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 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

Beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through partial boiling and then braising.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the broth and vegetables as it cooks.
Potatoes
Absorb the cooking liquid and become soft, thickening the braise slightly as they cook.
Cabbage
Softens during long covered cooking, becoming sweet and mellow as it releases moisture.

The step that matters

Cover and cook until the vegetables are tender and the beef is fully cooked. Cooking covered keeps moisture in so the beef stays juicy while collagen slowly breaks down. Stopping too early leaves tough meat and firm vegetables, so check both before serving.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, potato. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes