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Braised Beef, Parsley Sauce

Braised beef cooked slowly with carrots, onions, celery, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, cloves, mace, and stock, served with parsley sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Braised Beef, Parsley Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roll

  1. Lay the beef flat and pound it with a cutlet bat, then roll it tightly and tie it with string.

  2. Place the roll in a braising pan with chopped carrots, onions, celery, and a bouquet of parsley, thyme, and bay leaf.

  3. Add 6 cloves, a bit of mace, and enough stock or water to cover the meat.

Braise and press

  1. Simmer gently over low heat for about 4 hours until tender.

  2. Remove the beef without undoing the string and press it between two dishes with a 14-pound weight on top.

  3. Once nearly cold, remove the string and trim any rough parts.

Serve

  1. Warm the beef in a baking pan with a little of its own stock.

  2. Serve with parsley sauce poured over it and garnish with glazed carrots and onions.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  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

Thin flank beef
Forms the main body of the dish; long simmering turns its connective tissue tender.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma to the braising liquid as it cooks down.
Onions
Release sugars and savory aroma into the stock during the slow simmer.
Celery
Contributes aromatic flavor to the braising liquid.
Stock or water
Provides the moist cooking liquid that gently braises the beef.

The step that matters

Simmering gently over low heat. Boiling vigorously toughens meat and can make it stringy. A gentle simmer lets collagen slowly break down into gelatin, so the beef becomes tender without drying out.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, celery, parsley, thyme, 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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