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To Stew Brisket of Beef

A hearty stew of beef brisket with carrots, turnips, onion, celery, and a savory sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Stew Brisket of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Place the brisket in a stew pot with water and bring to a boil.

  2. Skim off any foam, then add carrots, turnips, onion, celery, and peppercorns.

  3. Stew until the meat is extremely tender.

  4. Remove the flat bones and excess fat from the soup.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix ½ pint of soup with ketchup, port wine, mustard, flour, butter, and salt.

  2. Boil the sauce for a few minutes and pour it around the meat.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat in a tureen with the soup or separately, garnished with vegetables.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Brisket of beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as its connective tissue breaks down during long stewing.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and body to the sauce, helping it feel smooth.
Port wine
Adds depth and a sweet, fruity flavour to the sauce.
Ketchup
Adds tomato sweetness and acidity to the sauce.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aroma to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Stew until the meat is extremely tender. Brisket is tough connective tissue that needs long, gentle simmering to break down into gelatin. Stopping early leaves the meat chewy, while a hard boil can toughen the muscle fibres and dry the meat.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, ketchup, port wine):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, ketchup, port wine. 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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