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Stewed Beef

A hearty stew of beef cubes with carrots, turnip, onion, celery, and seasonings simmered in water.

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 the pot.

  2. Allow them to brown, stirring occasionally.

Stew and serve

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

  2. Stir in the salt, pepper, and chopped celery.

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

  4. 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 meat that becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Flour
Coats the beef so it browns well and helps thicken the stewing liquid.
Onion
Browns and softens, adding sweetness and savory depth to the stew.
Carrot
Softens during stewing and adds natural sweetness to the broth.
Turnip
Softens during stewing and adds a mild, earthy flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the vegetables in very hot fat. Searing in very hot fat triggers the Maillard reaction, which builds deep brown color and savory flavor. Pale, steamed vegetables produce a flatter, less rich stew.

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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