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Stewed Brisket of Beef, a LA Flamande

A slow‑cooked beef brisket simmered with carrots, onions, celery, herbs, and spices, finished with a glaze and served with vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

Stewed Brisket of Beef, a LA Flamande

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and braise

  1. Trim the brisket of beef, removing the breast-bone and rough parts.

  2. Place the brisket in a large braising pan and garnish with carrots, onion, celery, parsley, green onions, thyme, bay leaf, cloves, and mace.

  3. Moisten with enough broth to cover the beef and bring to a gentle boil.

  4. Cook for about 5 hours until tender, then drain the brisket on a dish.

Glaze and serve

  1. Trim the brisket and place it on a baking sheet, pouring a little broth underneath.

  2. Glaze the brisket.

  3. Place the glazed brisket in a 400°F (200°C) oven to dry, glazing again as needed.

  4. Serve the brisket garnished with firm carrots, turnips, Brussels sprouts, and glazed onions.

  5. Sauce the beef with Espagnole or Poivrade sauce before serving.

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

Brisket of beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow moist cooking.
Broth
Keeps the beef moist during the long braise and forms the base for the glaze.
Carrots
Flavour the braising liquid with sweetness and aroma as they soften.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth to the braising liquid as it cooks down.
Celery
Contributes aromatic background flavour to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Cook the brisket slowly until tender. Brisket is a tough cut rich in connective tissue. Long, gentle simmering in liquid breaks that tissue down into gelatin, so the meat becomes tender. A hard boil toughens and dries the fibres, so keep the liquid at a gentle simmer.

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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