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Braised Beef

Braised beef with a sauce of carrot, onion, garlic, parsley, and cayenne, simmered in a flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Braised Beef

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 ↓

Braised Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a gentle oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the bone from the rib of beef.

  2. Rub the rib with pepper and salt.

Make the gravy base

  1. Heat the salad oil in a pan.

  2. Add the carrot, onions, cloves, and parsley.

  3. Fry for 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in the flour.

  5. Continue frying until it turns brown.

  6. Add the water, pepper, and salt.

  7. Transfer the mixture to a stewpan.

  8. Boil for 5 to 8 minutes.

Braise and serve

  1. Pour the liquid over the beef in a large baking dish.

  2. Bake in a gentle oven at 300°F (150°C) for about 5 hours.

  3. Baste frequently with the liquid without allowing it to boil.

  4. Strain the gravy.

  5. Serve with the beef.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 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

Rib of beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow cooking.
Flour
Thickens the browned liquid into a gravy as it cooks and combines with fat.
Salad oil
Conducts heat for frying the vegetables and flour, building colour and flavour.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, adding aromatic depth to the gravy.
Water
Forms the braising liquid that moistens the beef and dissolves flavour into the gravy.

The step that matters

Baste without boiling the liquid. Keeping the braising liquid at a gentle simmer or below prevents it from reducing too fast or turning cloudy, and keeps the meat moist and tender during the long bake.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, carrot, clove, parsley, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, carrot, clove, parsley, flour. 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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