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Beef Stew with Dumplings

A hearty beef stew with dumplings made from flour, baking powder, salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Stew with Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove meat from bones and cut into 2-inch pieces.

  2. Season the meat with flour, salt, and pepper.

  3. Brown the meat in its own fat or drippings.

Make the stew

  1. In a stew pan, combine the browned meat, onion, turnip, and carrots.

  2. Add enough boiling water to cover the ingredients.

  3. Cook slowly for 2 hours.

  4. Soak the sliced potatoes in cold water for 30 minutes.

  5. Add the soaked potatoes to the stew.

  6. Cook for 5 minutes.

Add dumplings and serve

  1. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt for the dumplings.

  2. Add milk to form a soft dough.

  3. Pat or roll the dough into small cakes or cut with a biscuit cutter.

  4. Place the dumplings on top of the stew, ensuring the liquid covers them.

  5. Cover and cook for 10 minutes.

  6. Serve the meat in the center of a platter with vegetables and dumplings around it.

  7. Thicken the gravy if desired and pour around the vegetables.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 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 savory meat flavour, and slow cooking tenderises its connective tissue.
Potatoes
Release starch as they cook, thickening the stew and giving it body.
All-purpose flour
Coats the meat to help it brown and thickens the gravy; also forms the dumpling dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dumpling dough, making the dumplings light and risen.
Milk
Moistens the flour into a soft dough for the dumplings.

The step that matters

Place the dumplings on top of the stew, ensuring the liquid covers them. Dumplings need to be partly submerged in simmering liquid so they cook through and rise; if the liquid is too low they can dry out, stay dense or cook unevenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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