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A Fricandeau of Beef

A beef fricandeau simmered in gravy with morels, truffles, and lemon, finished with ketchup, browning sauce, Cayenne pepper, forcemeat balls, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

A Fricandeau of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Lard the beef slices with bacon and dredge them in flour.

  2. Brown the beef slices over a brisk fire.

Stew and finish

  1. Place the browned beef in a pan with gravy, morels, truffles, and lemon.

  2. Stew for 30 minutes.

  3. Add ketchup, browning sauce, and Cayenne pepper to thicken the sauce.

  4. Pour the sauce over the beef and garnish with forcemeat balls and hard-boiled egg yolks.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Beef + truffletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together412 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethylphenol (must).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow stewing in gravy.
Bacon
Larded into the beef, adding fat and richness that keeps the lean meat moist as it cooks.
Flour
Dredged onto the beef so it browns well and helps thicken the sauce.
Gravy
Forms the cooking liquid and base of the sauce, carrying flavour into the beef.
Morels
Add earthy, savoury flavour to the sauce during stewing.
Browning sauce
Adds colour and deepens the sauce's savoury, roasted flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the beef over a brisk fire. Browning creates colour and roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. If the beef is crowded, too pale, or steamed rather than seared, the sauce will taste flat and look washed out.

“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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