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Baked Beef Stew

A hearty stew of beef, carrots, turnips, onions, garlic, potatoes simmered in boiling water and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Baked Beef Stew

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and simmer

  1. Chop beef, carrots, and turnips using a coarse meat chopper.

  2. Place in a pot with 6 quarts of boiling water and simmer for about 1 hour.

Season and bake

  1. Add seasoning, onions, and garlic.

  2. Add potatoes and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours.

Finish

  1. One-half hour before serving, add thickening.

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Garlic + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,517 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides savoury meat flavour and, after long cooking, a tender texture.
Potatoes
Their starch softens and helps thicken the cooking liquid as they bake.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and colour as they soften during cooking.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and hold their shape through long cooking.
Onions
Break down during cooking to add savoury aroma and body to the stew.

The step that matters

Add the thickening late. Starch thickeners need to be well mixed into the hot liquid and heated to swell and thicken it. If added too early or left unstirred, they can clump or lose their thickening power, leaving the stew thin or lumpy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, onion, garlic, 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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