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Braised Beef

Braised beef with lemon, spices, and a tomato-based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Braised Beef

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Braised Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Wipe the meat and rub both sides with lemon juice.

  2. Season the beef with salt and cayenne.

  3. Insert cloves into the beef.

  4. Let the beef stand for 30 minutes.

Brown and braise

  1. Heat drippings or suet in a frying pan until melted.

  2. Brown the beef quickly on both sides.

  3. Transfer the browned beef to a stewpan.

  4. Pour any juices from the plate over the beef.

  5. Add 1 pint of boiling water to the frying pan and pour the boiling water over the beef.

  6. Add carrot, onion, and bay leaves.

  7. Ensure the meat is almost covered with water.

  8. Cover the stewpan.

  9. Stew slowly, turning the beef every 30 minutes and replenishing water as needed.

  10. Cook for 2.5 to 3.5 hours until tender.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Transfer the beef to a hot platter.

  2. Mix flour, ketchup or Worcestershire sauce, and cold water for the sauce.

  3. Strain 1 pint of gravy into a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in the flour mixture.

  5. Boil for 7 minutes, stirring constantly.

  6. Season to taste.

  7. Pour half the sauce over the beef.

  8. Serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 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

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow, moist cooking.
Beef drippings or suet
Adds fat for browning the meat and carries flavour into the pan.
Lemon juice
Acidity that helps tenderise the surface of the meat before cooking.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy-style sauce.
Tomato ketchup or worcestershire sauce
Adds sweetness or savoury depth and tang to the sauce.

The step that matters

Brown the beef quickly on both sides. Searing creates browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or leaving the meat too long traps moisture, so it steams rather than browns.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, clove, carrot, onion, flour, tomato):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, clove, carrot, onion, flour, tomato. 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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