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Beef Gobbets

A beef stew with herbs, vegetables, bread crust, barley or rice, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Prepare the stew

  1. Cut the beef into small pieces and place them in a stew pan.

  2. Cover the beef with water and stew for 1 hour.

  3. Add mace, cloves, whole pepper in a muslin bag, and chopped celery.

Add vegetables and finish

  1. Include salt, turnips, carrots, parsley, sweet herbs, bread crust, and barley or rice.

  2. Cover and stew until the beef is tender.

  3. Remove the herbs, spices, and bread crust.

Serve

  1. Place the toasted French roll pieces in a dish, pour the meat and sauce over, and serve hot.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meat flavour, and long stewing softens its connective tissue until tender.
Barley or rice
Releases starch during stewing, helping to thicken the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the stew.
French roll
Toasted pieces soak up the sauce when it is poured over them.

The step that matters

Cover and stew until the beef is tender. Beef needs a long, gentle simmer to break down its connective tissue. Stopping early leaves the meat tough, while a hard boil can toughen the proteins and dry the meat out.

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.

“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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