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Beef Gobbets

A beef stew with spices, vegetables, bread, and barley or rice, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef Gobbets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Cut the beef into small pieces and place them in a stew pan.

  2. Cover the beef with water and stew for 1 hour.

  3. Add mace, cloves, whole pepper, celery, salt, turnips, carrots, parsley, sweet herbs, bread, and barley or rice.

  4. Cover and let it stew until the beef is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the herbs, spices, and bread.

  2. Place the toasted French roll pieces in a dish, pour the meat and sauce over, and serve hot.

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

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main protein, which softens into tender pieces during long, slow stewing.
Barley or rice
Swells as it cooks, thickening the liquid and giving the stew body.
Bread
Soaks up and thickens the stewing liquid, adding body to the sauce.
French roll
Toasted and laid in the dish, it soaks up the meat and sauce for a sturdier base.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and earthiness to the broth as they soften.

The step that matters

Stew until the beef is tender. Beef is tough collagen-rich meat. Slow, gentle simmering over time breaks down connective tissue into gelatin, which makes it tender. Rushing or boiling hard can leave it firm and stringy.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, pepper, celery, turnip, carrot, parsley. 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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