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Beef Ragout

A stew of lean beef in seasoned gravy with port wine, lemon, cayenne, mushroom ketchup, and poached forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Lard the beef with the fat from smoked beef.

  2. Stew the beef in good gravy seasoned with allspice, cloves, pepper, and coarse sea salt until well done.

  3. Remove the beef from the gravy and skim off any fat.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add port wine, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and mushroom ketchup to the gravy.

  2. Poach small forcemeat balls in the gravy.

Glaze and serve

  1. Glaze the beef for an elegant appearance.

  2. Pour the gravy over the beef and arrange the forcemeat balls around 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long, slow stewing.
Port wine
Adds depth, sweetness and color to the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savory, umami flavor to the gravy.
Fat from smoked beef
Adds moisture and smoky flavor to the lean beef as it is larded through.

The step that matters

Stew the beef until well done. Lean beef is tough unless cooked long and slowly in liquid, which breaks down connective tissue and makes it tender. Stopping early leaves it chewy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, allspice, clove, pepper, port wine, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Orangefits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, allspice, clove, pepper, port wine, mushroom, ketchup. 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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