Skip to main content
Main

Fricassee of Cold Roast Beef

A fricassee made with thinly sliced cold roast beef, onions, parsley, and a sauce of butter, flour, broth, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricassee of Cold Roast Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter over medium heat in a stewpan.

  2. Add the chopped onion and parsley and sauté until softened.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute.

  4. Pour in the broth and season with salt and pepper.

  5. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix in the egg yolks, port wine, and vinegar, then stir quickly over heat for 1-2 minutes.

  2. Add the sliced beef and heat through without boiling.

  3. Rub the serving dish with shallot.

  4. Transfer the fricassee into the dish.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Under-done beef
Provides the meat that is gently warmed through in the sauce without toughening.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the onion and parsley as they soften.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce when gently heated, giving it a silky texture.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the sweetness of the port.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but scramble if they boil. Stir quickly over moderate heat and keep the sauce from boiling, or it will curdle and turn grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, butter, flour, pepper, egg, port wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, butter, flour, pepper, egg, port wine. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes