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A stuffed beef brisket baked with bacon, parsley, oysters, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brisket

  1. Bone the brisket of beef and make holes in it about an inch apart.

  2. Fill one hole with fat bacon, a second with chopped parsley, and a third with chopped oysters.

  3. Season the stuffings with pepper, coarse sea salt, and nutmeg.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the stuffed brisket in a pan and pour on 1 pint of boiling wine.

  2. Dredge the meat well with flour and bake for 3 hours.

  3. Skim off all the fat, dish the meat, and strain the gravy over it.

  4. Garnish with pickles.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef brisket
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during the long bake.
Fat bacon
Melts during baking to add richness and moisture to the surrounding meat.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour that deepens the taste of the stuffed meat.
Boiling wine
Braises the meat and forms the base of the gravy, adding acidity and flavour.
Flour
Dredged over the meat to help it brown and thicken the gravy.

The step that matters

Bake for 3 hours in the covered braising liquid. A long, gentle bake in liquid breaks down the tough connective tissue in brisket. Too short or too hot a bake leaves the meat tough and dry, so the cook should keep it steadily simmering rather than boiling hard.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, oyster, pepper, wine, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, oyster, pepper, wine, flour. 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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