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Beef Gobbets

Beef Gobbets is a dish of seasoned beef bits fried in butter, stewed in gravy, finished with vinegar, port wine, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Gobbets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef into small bits.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, grated lemon peel, nutmeg, chopped parsley, and shallot.

Cook

  1. Fry the beef bits in butter until brown.

  2. Stew them in a rich brown gravy until tender.

  3. Add vinegar and port wine.

Finish

  1. Top with seasoned grated bread and brown under a salamander.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 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 body and substance of the dish, becoming tender when stewed.
Butter
Adds fat and helps the beef bits brown during frying.
Grated bread
Forms a crisp, browned topping when placed under the heat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew until tender. Beef is tough when raw and needs long, gentle, moist cooking so its connective tissue breaks down. Stopping early leaves it chewy. Adding the acidic vinegar and wine after the stewing is the step to watch, since acid added too early can slow tenderising.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, lemon, parsley, shallot, butter, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, lemon, parsley, shallot, butter, vinegar. 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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