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Beef, Boiled

A boiled beef dish seasoned with salt, peppercorns, bouquet garni, onions, carrots, and turnips, optionally served with suet dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Beef, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Choose a suitable cut of beef such as hitchbone, round, or brisket.

  2. Skewer or bind the meat into a compact form.

  3. Place the meat in a pot just large enough to cover it with water.

  4. Use warm water unless the meat is very salty, then use cold water.

Cook

  1. Gradually heat the water to boiling and skim off any foam.

  2. Add whole onions, thick slices of turnips, and lengthwise pieces of carrots after skimming.

  3. If using suet dumplings, add them to the boiling liquid one hour before serving.

Serve

  1. To serve, replace skewers with silver skewers, pour some cooking liquid around the dish, and garnish 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt beef
Is the main dish; its long simmer in water makes the meat tender.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid as it simmers.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color to the cooking liquid and the finished dish.
Turnips
Add a mild, slightly sweet flavor and soft texture after simmering.

The step that matters

Gradually heat the water to boiling and skim off any foam. Bringing the water up slowly and removing the foam that rises keeps the broth clearer and cleaner-tasting. Boiling hard from the start can toughen the meat's surface and cloud the liquid.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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