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Beef and Chestnuts

A stew of beef, fowl, bacon, and chestnuts flavored with lemon, garlic, and Cre‑fydd sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef and Chestnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate the beef

  1. Mix salad oil, lemon juice, salt, white pepper, cayenne, mustard powder, grated nutmeg, bruised garlic, and Cre‑fydd Sauce in a bowl.

  2. Rub the mixture into the beef.

  3. Let the beef marinate, covered, for 24 hours.

Braise the fowl and beef

  1. Clean the celery heart, carrot, and shallots.

  2. Chop the celery heart, carrot, and shallots.

  3. Melt butter in a stewpan.

  4. Add the chopped vegetables to the stewpan.

  5. Place the marinated beef in the stewpan.

  6. Pour the sauce over the beef.

  7. Add ¾ pint of cold water to the stewpan.

  8. Put the fowl on top of the beef.

  9. Spread 2 ounces of butter on the fowl's breast.

  10. Lay the bacon over the fowl.

  11. Peel the chestnuts.

  12. Arrange the chestnuts around the fowl.

  13. Bring the stew to a boil.

  14. Baste the fowl with gravy.

  15. Simmer gently for 2½ hours.

Make the white sauce

  1. Mix 1 tablespoon baked flour with ½ pint of milk.

  2. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.

  3. Add cream to the mixture.

  4. Add strained lemon juice to the beef.

Serve

  1. Serve the fowl on a hot dish with bacon around it.

  2. Pour the white sauce over the fowl.

  3. Serve the beef on a hot dish with gravy and 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. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Shallot + carrottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together803 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main cooked meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering in the stock.
Beef
Becomes tender during long, gentle simmering and absorbs flavour from the marinade.
Bacon
Its fat bastes the fowl and adds savoury, salty flavour to the dish.
Chestnuts
Add starchy body and a mild, sweet, nutty flavour to the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the breast brown and stay moist.
Milk
Forms the base of the white sauce, giving it body and a creamy texture when thickened.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 2½ hours. A gentle simmer keeps the liquid below a hard boil, so the beef and fowl become tender without the meat toughening or the stock turning cloudy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, milk, cream, garlic, shallot, carrot):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, milk, cream, garlic, shallot, carrot. 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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