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To Stew or Ragout a Brisket of Beef

A stew of brisket with carrots, turnips, onions, cauliflower sprigs, thickened with butter and flour, seasoned with salt, vinegar, catsup and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 17,091 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Wash and rub the brisket with salt and vinegar.

  2. Place it in a stewpot with water or stock.

Stew

  1. Skim well and let it stew slowly for at least 1 hour.

  2. Add the cut carrots, turnips, and whole onions.

  3. Continue stewing until the meat is very tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the bones and thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour and a little catsup.

  2. Season with mixed spices and serve the meat with cauliflower sprigs and thickened gravy with more catsup.

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. Beef + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,091 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + cauliflowertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together21,599 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together7,584 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

Brisket of beef
Slow stewing turns the tough connective tissue tender, giving the stew its main meat.
Butter and flour
Rolled together and stirred into the liquid, they thicken the gravy into a smooth body.
Catsup
Adds sweetness and tang to the gravy, rounding out its savoury flavour.
Carrots and turnips
Cooked in the stew, they add sweetness and soften into the gravy.

The step that matters

Continue stewing until the meat is very tender. Brisket is a tough, collagen-rich cut. It needs long, gentle simmering so the collagen breaks down into gelatin; stopping early leaves the meat chewy.

Flavor stand-ins for the cauliflower

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, vinegar, carrot, turnip, onion, butter, flour):

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Leekbetter flavor fit
  3. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, carrot, turnip, onion, butter, flour. 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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