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An Old Virginia Recipe for Brunswick Stew

A hearty stew of squirrel, beans, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and butter, simmered slowly with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

An Old Virginia Recipe for Brunswick Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the squirrels in cold water to draw out the blood.

Make the stew

  1. Bring the water and salt to a boil for 5 minutes in a large pot.

  2. Add the onions, butter beans, corn, and potatoes.

  3. Add the soaked squirrels to the pot.

  4. Cover the pot.

  5. Simmer on low heat for 2½ hours, stirring frequently.

  6. Stir in the tomatoes and sugar.

  7. Continue to simmer for an additional hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Ten minutes before serving, add the butter pieces.

  2. Bring the stew to a final boil.

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. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Beans + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Squirrels
Provide the meat that gives the stew its main body and flavour.
Butter beans
Add starchy body and a creamy texture as they cook into the broth.
Potatoes
Break down slightly to thicken the broth and add substance.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and fruity flavour that balances the rich broth.
Butter
Adds richness and, rolled in flour, helps thicken and enrich the stew at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the butter pieces at the end. Butter rolled in flour needs time to melt and thicken the liquid evenly. Adding it too early can let the fat separate and the flour clump, so it is added ten minutes before serving.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beans, potato, corn, tomato, sugar, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beans, potato, corn, tomato, sugar, pepper. 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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