Skip to main content
Main

Beef Bouilli in Different Wats

A boiled beef dish with a bacon, onion, fat liver, and game filling, wrapped in lambskin and served with sauce poivrade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Bouilli in Different Wats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Soak the beef in cold water for 5 minutes.

  2. Cut the beef into round slices without cutting through the fillet.

Stuff and wrap

  1. Make a filling with pounded bacon, chopped onion, fat liver, and any dressed game or poultry, seasoned with pepper, salt, and spice.

  2. Place some filling between each slice of beef.

  3. Wrap the beef in softened lambskin and cover with oiled paper.

  4. Tie it tightly and secure it on a spit.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast until done, then remove the paper and skin.

  2. Serve with sauce poivrade or your preferred sauce.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + livertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Beef + livertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, sliced and layered with filling.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the filling, keeping it moist during roasting.
Fat liver
Enriches the filling with fat, giving it a rich, soft texture.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness and depth to the seasoned filling.

The step that matters

Roast until done, then remove the paper and skin. The wrapping of lambskin and oiled paper shields the meat while it cooks. Removing it only after the meat is fully cooked keeps the juices inside and lets the surface brown evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, liver, pepper, sauce):

  1. Tomatofits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, liver, pepper, sauce. 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.

More beef bouilli recipes

Soup 10 See all 19 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes