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Brown Fricassee of Beef

A slow‑cooked beef fricassee with flour, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, onion, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Brown Fricassee of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the beef

  1. Dredge the beef pieces with flour and season the beef with salt and pepper.

  2. Brown the beef in the fat, then remove the beef from the fat.

Make the sauce

  1. Add 2 tablespoons of flour to the fat, browning it.

  2. Add 1 pint of boiling water, Worcestershire sauce, tomato ketchup, and onion slice to the browned flour.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture over the beef in an earthen dish.

  2. Cook for 5 hours at 300°F (150°C).

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Shin of beef
Provides the meat itself, which becomes tender during long, slow cooking.
All-purpose flour
Coats the beef and browns in the fat, then thickens the sauce.
Fat
Carries browning flavor into the beef and the flour base.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory, tangy depth to the sauce.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the fat. Flour cooked in fat until it turns golden develops nutty flavor and color and removes raw starch taste. If it is pale or scorched, the sauce tastes flat or bitter, and lumps form if liquid is added too quickly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, pepper, sauce, tomato, ketchup. 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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