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Beef Bouilli in Different Ways

A boiled beef dish prepared with onions, vinegar, stock, wine, and herbs, served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 Bouilli in Different Ways

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Bone the brisket.

  2. Beat it.

  3. Turn the beef two or three times.

Cook and season

  1. When hot, place it on a slower fire with hot ashes on the cover for 1.5 hours.

  2. Fry the halved onions in oil until browned.

  3. Add vinegar, stock, salt, and pepper.

  4. Dress the brisket with oil instead of butter (Côte à la Provencale).

  5. Baste with oil, lemon slices, onions, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  6. Grill the brisket on a quick fire the next day.

Serve

  1. Pour over the beef when served.

  2. Serve with the cooking sauce.

  3. Serve with a piquant sauce.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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 cut of meat, which becomes tender with slow, moist cooking.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet when fried until browned, flavouring the sauce.
Oil
Carries heat and moisture over the meat and helps it brown.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the meat.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Slow cooking with the ashes on the cover. Low, steady heat from above and below lets the connective tissue in the brisket break down slowly. Too much heat can dry out the meat and toughen it before it becomes tender.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, vinegar, lemon, parsley, white wine, veal. 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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