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Beef, Brisket of

A slow‑cooked beef brisket stew with bacon, carrots, onion, and aromatic spices in stock or brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef, Brisket of

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the brisket

  1. Cover the bottom of a stewpan with slices of bacon.

  2. Place the brisket on top and add more bacon slices.

  3. Add the bouquet garni, cloves, mace, allspice, peppercorns, and some vegetable trimmings.

  4. Nearly cover with stock or water and cook gently for 5 to 6 hours.

  5. Add more stock or water as needed to replace what boils away, keeping the stewpan covered.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Prepare the brown sauce using the stock from the stewpan if available.

  2. Dice the vegetables, cook them in stock or water until tender, and add to the sauce.

  3. Glaze the meat, garnish with a little vegetable, and serve on a hot 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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Thyme + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Brisket of beef
Forms the main body of the stew and becomes tender through long, slow cooking.
Slices of bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor to the stock as it renders during cooking.
Carrots
Contribute sweetness and body to the sauce once diced and cooked until tender.
Onion
Adds aromatic depth and body to the sauce when cooked until tender.
Brown sauce, stock, or water
Provides the cooking liquid that keeps the meat moist and forms the base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the stewpan covered and topped up with liquid. Long, gentle braising relies on steady moisture. If the liquid boils away and the pan is left uncovered, the meat can dry out and toughen before the collagen has time to break down into tender gelatin.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, onion, parsley, thyme, clove, allspice):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, parsley, thyme, clove, allspice. 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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