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French Stew

A stew of beef, tomatoes, butter, and flour, served hot with dry toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

French Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into pieces.

  2. Peel and slice the tomatoes.

Stew

  1. Place the meat and tomatoes in a stew pan and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Cover the pan and occasionally check the cooking.

  3. When the tomatoes are dissolved, stir in the butter rolled in flour.

  4. Stew for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, or until the meat is tender.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, garnished with points of dry toast.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef, veal, or pork
Provides the meat that becomes tender during the long, slow stew.
Ripe tomatoes
Break down into the liquid that forms the body of the stew.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished sauce.
Flour
Rolled into the butter to thicken the stewed tomato liquid.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter rolled in flour. Adding the flour-coated butter only after the tomatoes have dissolved lets it thicken the liquid smoothly. Added too early or unmixed, the flour can clump and leave the sauce lumpy.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, butter, 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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