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To Stew Brisket of Beef

A hearty stew of beef brisket with carrots, turnips, onions, celery, peppercorns, and optional suet dumplings.

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 ↓

To Stew Brisket of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. Place the brisket in a stew pot with a small amount of water.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

  3. Add chopped carrots, turnips, onions, celery, and peppercorns.

Stew and finish

  1. Stew until the meat is extremely tender.

  2. Remove the flat bones and excess fat from the soup.

  3. For added flavor, include small suet dumplings in the soup.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat and soup in a tureen or separately, garnished with vegetables.

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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Brisket of beef
Long stewing breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and enriching the broth.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften during stewing.
Onions
Release sugars and aromatic flavour that deepen the savoury base of the broth.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savoury flavour to the broth as it cooks.
Turnips
Soften during stewing and add mild sweetness and body to the broth.

The step that matters

Skim off the foam after bringing to a boil. Foam carries impurities from the meat that cloud the broth and can taint its flavour. Removing it early keeps the soup clear and clean-tasting throughout the long stew.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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