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Beef Stew

A slow‑cooked beef stew with bacon, herbs, and a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the beef with black pepper, allspice, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Place bacon slices in the bottom of a pan with whole black pepper, allspice, bay leaves, onions, garlic, and sweet herbs.

  3. Add the beef and top with more bacon.

Stew

  1. Pour in the weak stock and white wine.

  2. Cover the pan and let it stew for 6 to 7 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain part of the cooking liquid.

  2. Thicken the strained liquid with flour and butter.

  3. Stir in chopped green onions and pickled mushrooms.

  4. Pour the sauce over the beef.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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
Long stewing turns the tough meat tender and gives the dish its body.
Bacon
Its rendered fat and smoky flavour season the meat and the cooking liquid.
Flour
Starch thickens the strained cooking liquid into a sauce.
Butter
Fat enriches the thickened sauce and adds a rounder, silkier mouthfeel.
White wine
Acidity brightens the stewing liquid and balances the rich meat.

The step that matters

Thicken the strained liquid with flour and butter. Flour needs to be cooked in fat and whisked into hot liquid so it dissolves evenly without lumps. Gentle simmering then lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce fully.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, allspice, clove, garlic, white wine, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, allspice, clove, garlic, white wine, 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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