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Braising Meat

A method of cooking meat with vegetables, herbs, and stock, finished by browning in the oven and serving with a reduced glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Braising Meat

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Braise

  1. Place a layer of sliced vegetables and herbs at the bottom of a stew pan.

  2. Add the meat on top of the vegetables.

  3. Pour enough stock to come halfway up the meat.

  4. Simmer gently until the meat is tender.

Brown and glaze

  1. Transfer the meat to a baking sheet and brown it in the oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Strain the stock and reduce it to a glaze by boiling rapidly.

  3. Serve the meat on a hot dish with the glaze poured over.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Sliced vegetables
Flavor the braising liquid and form a bed that keeps the meat off the pan bottom.
Stock
Provides the braising liquid that cooks the meat gently and later reduces to a glaze.
Bay leaves
Add aroma to the braising liquid as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the meat is tender. Rapid boiling toughens meat proteins and dries the surface, while slow simmering lets collagen break down into gelatin, making the meat tender and moist.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, tomato, celery, parsley, thyme, marjoram):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, tomato, celery, parsley, thyme, marjoram. 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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