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Beef Bouilli, How to Serve in Different Ways

A boiled brisket served with gravy, onions, herbs, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef Bouilli, How to Serve in Different Ways

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Hone a piece of brisket and roll it up tightly.

  2. Bind it and place it in a stewpan with some stock.

  3. Stew the brisket until fully cooked.

Make the onions and braise

  1. For Beef à la Manger, fry 20 small onions in butter, shaking a little flour over them for 5 minutes.

  2. Add 1 cup of stock, salt, pepper, the piece of beef, nutmeg, and a bunch of sweet herbs.

  3. Stew for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve the beef with the onions arranged around it.

  2. Serve with parsley or good gravy garnished with cresses.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Brisket
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender when stewed slowly.
Butter
Fat that fries the onions, adding richness and helping them brown.
Flour
Dusted over the onions, it helps thicken the cooking liquid and coat the onions.
Onions
Soften during frying and stewing, adding sweetness to the savoury liquid.
Stock
Moist cooking liquid that gently cooks the brisket and forms the base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stewing the brisket. Brisket is a tough cut rich in connective tissue. Long, gentle stewing at low heat breaks this down into tender meat, while a vigorous boil can toughen and dry the fibres.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg. 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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