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Beef, Stewed Brisket

A slow‑cooked brisket stew with celery, carrots, onions, turnip, herbs, peppercorns, and cloves, served hot or cold with gravy or glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef, Stewed Brisket

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Place the brisket in a large stewpan and cover with water.

  2. Prepare the vegetables.

  3. Add the vegetables to the pot along with the cloves stuck in the onions, peppercorns, and herbs tied in muslin.

  4. Simmer gently for 4 to 5 hours, skimming occasionally.

Serve hot

  1. For hot serving, remove the meat.

  2. Thicken some of the liquid for gravy.

  3. Serve.

Prepare for cold serving

  1. For cold serving, remove the bones.

  2. Press the meat between two boards with a weight.

  3. Strain the liquid.

  4. Reduce the liquid to a glaze.

  5. When the meat is cold, wipe it with a hot cloth.

  6. Brush it with the glaze.

  7. Add a drop or two of cochineal for color.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 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
Is the main cut of meat that becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aromatic flavor to the cooking liquid.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aromatic flavor to the cooking liquid.
Celery
Adds savory, aromatic flavor to the cooking liquid.
Leek
Adds mild onion-like aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 4 to 5 hours, skimming occasionally.. A gentle simmer slowly breaks down the connective tissue in brisket so it becomes tender. A hard boil toughens the meat and clouds the liquid, so the heat must stay low and the scum must be skimmed off.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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