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To Stew Brisket of Beef

A hearty stew of beef brisket with vegetables, flavored with ketchup, port wine, mustard, and a sauce of soup, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 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

Make the stock

  1. Place the brisket with hard fat in a stew pot with ½ cup of water.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim thoroughly.

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

  4. Stew until extremely tender.

  5. Remove the flat bones and any fat from the soup.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine ½ pint of the soup, ketchup, port wine, mustard, flour, butter, and salt in a pot.

  2. Boil together for a few minutes and pour around the meat.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup and meat in a tureen, or serve the soup alone and the meat on a dish garnished with vegetables.

  2. Chop capers, walnuts, red cabbage, pickled cucumbers, and chives or parsley, and arrange in separate heaps over the meat.

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 + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 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 with hard fat
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow stewing.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it boils.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, giving it a smoother mouthfeel.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the sauce.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the soup as they stew.

The step that matters

Stew until extremely tender. Tough connective tissue in brisket only breaks down into gelatin with long, gentle simmering. Rushing this step or letting the liquid boil hard leaves the meat chewy and dry.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

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