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Boiled Brisket of Beef, a L'anglaise

A boiled beef brisket cooked with carrots, onions, celery, and suet dumplings, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Boiled Brisket of Beef, a L'anglaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Procure a piece of brisket of beef that has been salted for about a week.

  2. Wash the beef in cold water.

  3. Place the beef in a large oval braising pan.

  4. Garnish the pan with carrots, onions, and celery.

  5. Pour enough cold water into the pan to nearly fill it.

Cook

  1. Bring the water to a boil.

  2. Skim off the scum as it rises.

  3. Reduce the heat to a gentle boil and cook for 4 to 5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the beef to an earthenware dish.

  2. Trim the beef.

  3. Glaze the beef.

  4. Garnish with boiled turnips and carrots shaped like pears or leaves.

  5. Place small suet dumplings at each end of the beef.

  6. Pour gravy under the beef.

  7. Serve 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, whose connective tissue softens into tender meat during long gentle boiling.
Suet
Adds richness and moisture to the dumplings through its fat content.
Onions
Contribute aromatic flavour to the cooking water that seasons the beef.
Carrots
Add sweetness and flavour to the cooking liquid and the finished garnish.

The step that matters

Reduce the heat to a gentle boil. A rolling boil toughens meat and can break it apart. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue slowly break down, keeping the brisket tender and moist over 4 to 5 hours.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, onion, celery, turnip):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, celery, turnip. 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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