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A beef stew cooked with bacon, calf's foot, herbs, and wine, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 9,057 recipes mention both. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Remove the bones from the beef and lard it with the bacon.

  2. In a crockery stewpan, combine the calf's foot, parsley, chives, bay leaf, garlic, thyme, onions, salt, pepper, carrot, diced bacon, and chopped shallots.

  3. Wet the mixture with white wine and water.

  4. Place the beef on top, cover the pan tightly, and set it on a moderate fire or in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

Cook

  1. Simmer gently for about 5 hours.

Serve warm

  1. Dish the meat.

  2. Strain the sauce over the meat.

  3. Serve warm.

Serve cold

  1. If there's too much fat, skim it off before straining.

  2. Let the sauce cool until it resembles jelly.

  3. Serve cold.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

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

  4. Chive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,585 recipes

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

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, becoming tender during long, gentle simmering.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that enriches the meat and sauce as it renders.
Calf's foot
Releases gelatin during long simmering, giving the sauce its jelly-like set when cooled.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic depth to the braising liquid.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic complexity to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for about 5 hours. Gentle, low heat lets collagen in the beef and calf's foot slowly break down into gelatin, making the meat tender and the sauce rich. A rapid boil would toughen the meat and cloud the sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, chive, garlic, thyme, onion, pepper):

  1. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  2. Rosemarybetter flavor fit
  3. Basilbetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, chive, garlic, thyme, onion, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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