Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Leg of Beef

A stew of beef leg pieces browned, floured, and cooked with carrots, onions, pepper, salt, and water until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Charles Elme Francatelli · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Leg of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the beef leg or shin into pieces the size of an egg.

  2. Fry the pieces in a good sized saucepan with a little dripping fat until they are brown.

  3. Shake the browned pieces in a large handful of flour.

Stew

  1. Add carrots and onions cut into pieces the same size as the meat.

  2. Season with pepper and salt.

  3. Moisten with enough water to cover the whole.

  4. Stir the stew on the fire until it boils.

  5. Set it on the hob to continue boiling very gently for about an hour and a half.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

461Calories
13 gProtein
1 gFat
96 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 3 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Charles Elme Francatelli. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of beef
Provides the main body and chewy, rich texture once slowly simmered.
Flour
Coats the browned meat and thickens the cooking liquid into a light gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the beef pieces. Frying the meat until well browned builds deep savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat added to the stew will taste flat and less rich.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes