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Beef Fricandeau

A slow‑cooked beef stew with vegetables, sherry, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Fricandeau

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare the vegetables, chopping them small except for one onion, which should be studded with cloves.

  2. Place the chopped vegetables and the bunch of herbs at the bottom of a stewpan.

Braise

  1. Lard the top side of the beef, season with pepper, salt, and powdered mace, and place it in the pan.

  2. Pour the sherry and about ⅓ cup of stock over the meat.

  3. Cook until the wine and stock are absorbed.

  4. Transfer the meat to a pan with 1½ cups of stock.

  5. Simmer gently in the oven at 300°F (150°C) for 1½ hours, allowing the top to brown.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat on a dish with cooked vegetables or a border of spinach.

  2. Strain the gravy to serve separately.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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 fillet
Forms the main body of the stew, becoming tender during slow, gentle simmering.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma, and helps flavour the meat and gravy as it reduces.
Stock
Provides moisture for the braise and forms the base of the gravy.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the gravy as they soften during cooking.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma to the gravy as they cook down.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the lean beef as it is larded into the meat.

The step that matters

Simmer gently in the oven. Gentle, low heat lets the connective tissue in the beef break down slowly, keeping the meat tender and juicy rather than tough and dry. Too much heat toughens the proteins and drives off moisture.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sherry, carrot, turnip, onion, clove, pepper. 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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