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To Fricasse Cold Roast-beef

A fricassee made from thinly sliced cold roast beef, parsley, onion, butter, broth, and a sauce of egg yolks, wine, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Fricasse Cold Roast-beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fricassee

  1. In a stew pan, combine the beef, parsley, onion, butter, and broth.

  2. Season with pepper and salt.

  3. Let it stew gently for 15 minutes.

  4. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with red wine and vinegar.

  5. Add the meat mixture to the egg mixture and stir until thickened.

Serve

  1. Rub the serving dish with a shallot before serving.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Red wine + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together575 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender while stewing in the broth.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set gently with the warm meat mixture, giving it a silky texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the stewed meat and sauce.
Broth
Supplies the liquid that keeps the meat moist while it stews.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the egg-enriched sauce.
Onion
Contributes savoury sweetness and aroma to the stewed base.

The step that matters

Adding the meat mixture to the egg mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently. Adding the hot meat mixture slowly and stirring constantly keeps the yolks from scrambling, which would leave the sauce grainy instead of smooth and thickened.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, butter, pepper, egg, red wine, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, butter, pepper, egg, red wine, vinegar. 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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