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Mutton or Beef Stew

A stew of mutton or beef with vegetables, thickened with flour and tomato sauce.

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

Mutton or Beef Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan and brown the meat slightly.

  2. Transfer the browned meat to a pot.

  3. Add the water to the pot.

  4. Bring the mixture to a slow boil.

Simmer with vegetables

  1. Prepare the vegetables (turnip, carrot, onion, potatoes) and add them to the pot.

  2. Once the meat is tender, remove it from the pot.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Place the meat on a platter with the vegetables around it.

  2. Thicken the gravy with the browned flour and tomato sauce.

  3. Season the gravy with salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Pour the gravy over the meat and vegetables.

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

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

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

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

  4. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 savoury, meaty flavour and substance of the stew.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the meat and a rich flavour.
Potatoes
Soften during simmering and add starch that lightly thickens the broth.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and colour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a slow boil. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil lets the meat become tender without toughening or breaking apart. A hard boil tends to make muscle fibres contract and the meat dry and stringy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, turnip, carrot, onion, potato, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, turnip, carrot, onion, potato, flour. 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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