Skip to main content
Main

Beef Stew From the Cold Roast

A stew made with beef from a cold roast, vegetables, flour, and water, simmered with potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Beef Stew From the Cold Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut all the meat from the bones of a cold roast of beef.

  2. Remove the fat.

  3. Heat the fat in a frying pan.

  4. Add the lean meat cut into small pieces.

  5. Place the bones in a stew pan.

  6. Lay the meat on top of the bones.

Make the vegetable base

  1. Heat 5 tablespoons of liquid fat in another frying pan.

  2. Add the minced vegetables.

  3. Cook the vegetables slowly for 30 minutes.

  4. Increase the heat and cook for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.

  5. Add the cooked vegetables to the stew pan with the bones and meat.

Simmer the stew

  1. Sprinkle in the flour, salt, and pepper.

  2. Pour in the boiling water.

  3. Add the sliced potatoes.

  4. Simmer until the potatoes are tender.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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
Provides the main meat and rich, savoury flavour in the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light gravy as it simmers.
Potatoes
Add starch and body, becoming tender and soft during the simmer.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens and browns in the fat.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the vegetables. Cooking the vegetables briefly with the heat raised and stirring constantly helps prevent scorching and lets the flavour develop before the liquid goes in. Adding flour and liquid to a hot pan without enough stirring can leave lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, celery, flour, pepper, potato. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes