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Stewed Beef-steak with Sorrel Purée

A stewed beef steak served with a sorrel purée and a broth sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Beef-steak with Sorrel Purée

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the braise

  1. Make a pint of broth with beef scraps and keep it hot.

  2. In a high-sided sauté pan, melt the butter over low heat.

  3. Add the minced onion, carrot, turnip, celery, and parsley to the pan.

  4. Place the steak on the vegetables, fry briskly for 5 minutes, then moisten with enough hot broth to cover.

Braise and make the sauce

  1. Simmer gently with the cover on, adding broth as needed to replace evaporation.

  2. Check tenderness with a trussing needle; when done, remove the steak and keep it warm.

  3. Strain and skim the broth, thicken it slightly, and color with a few drops of Parisian essence.

Make the purée and serve

  1. Prepare the sorrel purée by blanching the sorrel in boiling salted water for 12 minutes, then drain and chop.

  2. Arrange the sorrel purée on a hot dish, place the steak on top, brush with diluted glaze, and pour the sauce around it.

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. Turnip + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 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 steak
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow, moist simmering.
Butter
Fat that enriches the pan base and carries the flavor of the aromatic vegetables.
Onion, carrot, turnip, celery
Aromatic vegetables that release sweetness and savory depth into the braising broth.
Beef broth
Moist cooking liquid that tenderizes the steak and becomes the body of the sauce.
Sorrel
Adds sharp acidity and bright green flavor to the purée, balancing the rich beef.

The step that matters

Simmer gently with the cover on. Slow, moist heat breaks down the connective tissue in the steak into tender gelatin. Boiling or letting the liquid evaporate would toughen the meat and concentrate the sauce too much.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, sorrel. 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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