Skip to main content
Main

Beef Fricandeau

A larded beef stew cooked in broth, sherry, and herbs, then glazed and served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef Fricandeau

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lard one side of the beef with slices of bacon.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the eschalot, sweet herbs, parsley, cloves, broth, sherry, pepper, and salt. Add garlic if desired for extra flavor.

  3. Place the beef in the stewpan.

Braise and reduce

  1. Stew until tender.

  2. Remove the meat. Keep it covered.

  3. Skim the sauce. Strain the sauce.

  4. Boil it until reduced to a glaze.

Glaze and serve

  1. Glaze the beef on the larded side.

  2. Serve with sauce piquante or sauce sorrel.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the main body of the dish, becoming tender during slow stewing.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the lean beef as it is larded into the meat.
Broth
Forms the stewing liquid that cooks the beef and later reduces to a glaze.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the stewing liquid and sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce until reduced to a glaze. Reducing the strained liquid concentrates its gelatin and flavour, so it clings to the beef. If it is under-reduced it stays thin and runs off; if over-reduced it can turn sticky or bitter.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, shallot, parsley, sherry, pepper, garlic):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, shallot, parsley, sherry, pepper, garlic. 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