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Stewed Beef

A hearty stew of beef, carrots, turnips, onions, celery, and flour simmered in water until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Stewed Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Flour the beef pieces.

  2. In a deep skillet or saucepan, heat the trimmed fat until very hot.

Brown the vegetables

  1. Add the sliced vegetables and cover, allowing them to brown, stirring occasionally.

  2. Once browned, pour in the boiling water and add the beef.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and celery.

Simmer and serve

  1. Let the stew simmer gently for at least 2 hours, or until the meat is tender.

  2. Skim off any fat before serving.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  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
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Coats the beef and thickens the cooking liquid, giving the stew body.
Onion
Browns in the hot fat, adding sweetness and savory depth to the stew.
Carrot
Browns slightly and adds natural sweetness to the stew.
Turnip
Browns slightly and adds a mild, earthy sweetness to the stew.

The step that matters

Heat the fat until very hot before adding the vegetables. Very hot fat lets the floured beef and vegetables brown rather than steam. Browning builds deeper flavor through the Maillard reaction, which gives the stew its savory color and taste.

Swap the onion

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

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

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