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To Stew Brisket of Beef

A hearty stew of beef brisket with vegetables, flavored with ketchup, port wine, mustard, and a sauce of soup, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Stew Brisket of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the beef

  1. Place the brisket with hard fat into a stew pot with ½ cup of water.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim thoroughly.

  3. Add chopped carrots, turnips, onions, celery, and peppercorns.

  4. Stew until extremely tender.

  5. Remove the flat bones and all fat from the soup.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, mix ½ pint of the soup with 1 tablespoon of ketchup, ⅓ cup of port wine, 1 teaspoon of mustard, a little flour, a bit of butter, and salt.

  2. Boil the sauce for a few minutes and pour it around the meat.

  3. Serve the soup and meat in a tureen or separately on a dish garnished with vegetables.

  4. Garnish with chopped capers, walnuts, red cabbage, pickled cucumbers, and chives or parsley.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 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 and gives the broth its rich meaty flavour.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce as it reduces.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharp acidity and bite that balances the rich sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the meat.
Ketchup
Adds tomato sweetness and acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew until extremely tender. Brisket is tough connective tissue that only softens with long, gentle simmering below a hard boil. Cooking too fast or too briefly leaves the meat chewy, and the broth stays thin.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, ketchup, port wine):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, ketchup, port 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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