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Beef Bouilli

A boiled beef with vegetables, seasoned with spices, served with broth.

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 Bouilli

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the beef in a large pot and cover with water.

  2. Bring to a boil, skimming off any scum that rises.

  3. Add carrots, onions, turnips, celery, parsley, and optional ham or anchovy.

  4. Simmer gently for 4-5 hours.

Prepare and serve

  1. Remove the meat and keep warm.

  2. Boil a large carrot, onion, turnip, and celery until tender, then slice them.

  3. Thicken part of the broth with flour and add the sliced vegetables.

  4. Warm the mixture and pour it over the meat when 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + peppertop 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 brisket or leg and shin
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Thickens part of the broth into a light sauce that coats the meat and vegetables.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth and are served as sliced vegetables.
Onions
Add savory depth and aroma to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmering gently for 4-5 hours. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear and lets collagen in the tough cuts break down into tender meat. A hard boil would toughen the proteins and cloud the liquid.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, allspice, 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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