Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Brisket of Beef

A slow‑cooked brisket simmered in consommé with carrots, onions, and allspice, thickened with corn flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,021 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Brisket of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Rub the brisket with a little coarse sea salt.

  2. Let it sit for 2 hours.

  3. Place the brisket in a stewpan and cover it with consommé.

  4. Simmer for 1 hour.

Stew

  1. Add the carrots, onions, and allspice, and continue to stew until the beef is tender.

  2. Remove the beef.

  3. Discard the bones.

  4. Place the beef between two dishes to cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Let the stock cool, then remove all fat.

  2. Return the stock and beef to the pot and heat until hot.

  3. Cut the carrots into dice.

  4. Thicken the gravy with corn flour.

  5. Serve with the vegetables.

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

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

  2. Carrot + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together794 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Brisket of beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow stewing.
Consommé
Liquid that cooks the beef and forms the stock for the gravy.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the stewed vegetables and gravy.
Onions
Add savory depth and sweetness as they soften in the stew.
Corn flour
Starch that thickens the stock into a gravy when heated.

The step that matters

Stew until the beef is tender. Brisket is a tough cut rich in connective tissue. Slow simmering over time breaks that tissue down into gelatin, so the meat turns tender. Stopping early leaves it chewy.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, corn, flour. 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.

More stewed brisket recipes

with French Beans 3 See all 18 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes