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Beef Stewed

A hearty beef stew with onions, carrots, herbs, lemon, and optional capers, mushroom ketchup, cayenne pepper, and pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Beef Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Cut the brisket of beef and short ribs.

  2. Place the beef in a well buttered saucepan.

  3. Add the onions, carrots, sweet herbs, lemon, and water.

  4. Let it stew for 7 hours.

Finish the gravy

  1. Strain and clarify the gravy.

  2. Thicken the gravy with butter and flour.

  3. Chop the carrots and mix with capers, mushroom ketchup, and cayenne.

  4. Add any other preferred pickle.

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. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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

Brisket of beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender during the long, slow stew.
Butter and flour
Thicken the gravy so it coats the meat and carrots.
Water
Forms the liquid that slowly extracts flavour from the meat and vegetables.

The step that matters

Let it stew for 7 hours. Tough connective tissue in brisket breaks down into gelatin only with long, gentle simmering. Rushing or boiling hard can leave the meat stringy and dry out the liquid.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, clove, carrot, butter, flour, capers):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, clove, carrot, butter, flour, capers. 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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