Skip to main content
Main

Beef or Mutton Stew

A hearty stew of beef or mutton with potatoes, turnip, carrot, and onion, simmered slowly with flour and seasonings.

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

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 or Mutton Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove fat and cut the meat into 1-inch pieces.

  2. Reserve half of the best pieces of meat.

  3. Soak the remaining meat and bone in cold water for one hour.

  4. Heat the soaked meat and bone until it bubbles.

Brown the meat and onion

  1. Dredge the reserved meat in flour.

  2. Melt fat in a frying pan and brown the sliced onion.

  3. Brown the floured meat.

Simmer the stew

  1. Add both to the stew and cook for two hours on low heat.

  2. Add the vegetables and cook for 30 minutes.

  3. Mix the flour and seasoning with ½ cup cold water and add the mixture to the stew.

  4. Cook for another 30 minutes until tender.

  5. Remove the bone and serve.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + carrottop 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 or mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during long, slow cooking.
Flour
Coats the meat for browning and thickens the stew liquid.
Potatoes
Add starch and body, softening into the stew as it cooks.
Turnip
Adds bulk and a mild, slightly sweet flavor as it cooks.
Onion
Browned first to build savory depth in the stew.

The step that matters

Browning the floured meat. Meat browns only when its surface is dry and hot enough; crowding the pan or skipping the heat makes it steam, losing the deep flavor that browning creates.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

More beef stew recipes

with Dumplings 30Brazilian 20French 20Spiced 17Pudding 16English 15 See all 357 →

You might also like

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