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To Fricassee Beef with Vegetables

A stew of sliced vegetables and cold beef simmered in stock, seasoned with salt, cayenne pepper, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 336 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Fricassee Beef with Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Make the vegetable base

  1. In a stewpan, combine onions, carrot, turnip, beetroot, celery, cauliflower, stock, salt, Cayenne pepper, and cloves.

  2. Stew the vegetables slowly over medium heat for 20 minutes.

Heat and serve

  1. Add thin slices of cold beef and heat thoroughly.

  2. Remove the beef and place it on a hot dish.

  3. Drain the vegetables and arrange them around the beef.

  4. Strain the gravy and pour it over the dish.

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. Turnip + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Beetroot + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together146 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

Onions
Break down during stewing to add sweetness and body to the stock.
Cauliflower
Softens during slow stewing, adding bulk and a mild flavour to the dish.
Stock
Forms the cooking liquid that becomes the gravy and carries the flavour of the dish.
Beef
Provides the main protein; gentle reheating in the stock keeps it tender rather than tough.

The step that matters

Stew the vegetables slowly over medium heat. Gentle, steady heat softens the vegetables evenly and draws flavour into the stock without boiling it hard, which would toughen the vegetables and cloud the gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, beetroot, celery, cauliflower, pepper, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, beetroot, celery, cauliflower, pepper, clove. 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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