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Beef Tremblane

A slow‑cooked beef stew with onions, turnips, carrot, butter, gravy, ketchup, browning sauce, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Beef Tremblane

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Tie the brisket tightly.

  2. Simmer the brisket over low heat for six hours.

  3. Season the brisket with salt and allspice.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter.

  2. Mix the melted butter with the gravy, ketchup, browning sauce, and white wine.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the onions, turnips, and carrot to the brisket.

  2. Cut the vegetables into pieces.

  3. Stew everything gently until the roots are tender.

  4. Add pepper and salt to taste.

  5. Skim off the fat.

  6. Serve the beef with the sauce over 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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

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

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together445 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and rich through long, slow simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour into the sauce.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury body and moisture.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften in the stew.
Turnips
Soften during stewing, adding mild sweetness and body to the dish.

The step that matters

Simmer the brisket over low heat for six hours. Brisket is tough connective tissue that needs long, gentle heat to break down into tender meat. Higher heat tightens the muscle fibres and can leave the meat dry and chewy.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, turnip, carrot, butter, ketchup, sauce, white wine):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, turnip, carrot, butter, ketchup, sauce, white wine. 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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