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Beef Stew

A hearty stew of beef, onions, turnips, rice, potatoes, and oatmeal simmered in water with herbs and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Beef Stew

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stewpan, combine beef, water, onions, and turnips.

  2. Add thyme, parsley, pepper, salt, rice, potatoes, and oatmeal.

  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and let stew for 4 hours.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 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 gentle simmering breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and rich.
Potatoes
Their starch softens during cooking and gives the stew body and substance.
Patna rice
Its starch absorbs liquid and thickens the stew as it cooks.
Oatmeal
Its starch thickens the cooking liquid, adding body to the stew.
Onions
They soften and add sweetness and savory depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Keep the stew at a gentle simmer. After bringing it to a boil, reducing the heat to a gentle simmer matters. A hard boil toughens the meat and can break up the potatoes and rice, while slow simmering lets the beef become tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, turnip, thyme, parsley, pepper, rice, potato):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turnip, thyme, parsley, pepper, rice, 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.

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