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Beef Gobbets

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef Gobbets

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the beef into pieces the size of a pullet's egg.

  2. Place the beef in a stewpan and cover with water.

  3. Let it stew for an hour, skimming off any impurities.

  4. Add mace, cloves, whole pepper in a muslin rag, and small-cut celery.

  5. Include salt, turnips, carrots, parsley, sweet herbs, and a large crust of bread.

  6. Cover and let it stew until tender.

  7. Remove the herbs, spices, and bread before serving.

  8. Serve with a French roll cut into four pieces.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

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

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, pepper, celery, turnip, carrot, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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