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Stewed Beets, with Gee AM Sauce

A simple stew of sliced beets cooked in butter with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and coriander.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and coriander match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,949 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Stewed Beets, with Gee AM Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the salt, pepper, nutmeg, and coriander to the melted butter.

  3. Stir in the sliced beets and cook until thoroughly warmed.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Pepper + coriandertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,949 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + coriandertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together397 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Beets
Provide the main body and earthy sweetness of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the spices and coating the beets.

Swap the coriander

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg. 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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