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Beef Stew with Dumplings

A hearty beef stew with potatoes, carrots, turnips, onions, and homemade dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip 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 beef

  1. Wipe the beef and remove it from the bone.

  2. Dredge the beef cubes in seasoned flour.

  3. Cut some fat into small pieces and heat in a frying pan.

  4. Add the beef and sear it.

  5. Transfer the seared beef to a deep kettle.

  6. Rinse the frying pan with boiling water and add it to the kettle.

Make the stew

  1. Boil the mixture for 5 minutes, then reduce to a simmer and cook until tender, about 3 hours.

  2. Add the carrots, turnips, and onion during the last hour of cooking.

  3. Add the potatoes to the stew 15 minutes before serving.

Make and add the dumplings

  1. For the dumplings, mix and sift 2 cups of flour, 4 teaspoons of baking powder, and ½ teaspoon of salt.

  2. Cut in 1 teaspoon of butter with a knife, then stir in ⅔ cup of milk slowly.

  3. Drop the dumpling mixture onto a floured saucer, cover lightly, and lift into the boiling stew.

  4. Cover the stew and cook for 15 minutes without removing the lid.

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. Carrot + turniptop 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
Provides the main protein and meaty body; simmering for hours makes it tender.
Potatoes
Thicken the broth slightly as their starch breaks down and add body to the stew.
Flour
Dusting the beef helps it brown and thickens the stew liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, making the dumplings rise and turn light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a soft dough that cooks into tender dumplings.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the dumplings and gives a softer crumb.

The step that matters

Cover the stew and do not lift the lid while dumplings cook. Steam trapped under the lid cooks and raises the dumplings. Lifting the lid lets steam escape, so the dumplings can sink and turn dense.

Swap the onion

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

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

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