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Fricandeau De Bceuf

A slow‑cooked beef brisket stew flavored with bacon, wine, onions, herbs, mace, cloves, and garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Fricandeau De Bceuf

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brisket

  1. Bone and shape the brisket.

  2. Lard it thickly and place it in a stewpan.

  3. Cover with slices of fat bacon.

Stew

  1. Add beef stock, wine, small onions, sweet herbs, mace, cloves, and garlic.

  2. Stew very slowly until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the meat and strain the sauce, skimming off the fat.

  2. Serve the meat with the sauce and arrange small onions 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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. White wine + garlictop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,044 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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, becoming tender and juicy through slow stewing.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that bastes the meat as it cooks.
Beef stock
Provides the liquid that gently cooks the meat and forms the sauce.
Red or white wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Small onions
Contribute sweetness and body to the sauce and serve as a garnish.
Garlic
Adds aromatic pungency that mellows during long, slow cooking.

The step that matters

Stew very slowly until tender. Low, gentle heat breaks down the connective tissue in brisket into gelatin. Boiling fast toughens the meat's proteins and leaves it dry and stringy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, white wine, onion, clove, garlic):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, white wine, onion, clove, garlic. 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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