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A Good Beef Stew

A hearty stew of beef, carrots, potatoes, onion, and garlic simmered in water with seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

A Good Beef Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the vegetable oil in a large pot over medium heat.

  2. Add the beef chunks and brown them on all sides.

  3. Stir in the onion and garlic, cooking until softened.

Simmer

  1. Add the water, carrots, potatoes, salt, pepper, and bay leaf.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours until the beef is tender.

  3. Remove the bay leaf 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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,517 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and rich.
Potatoes
Starch thickens the broth slightly and gives the stew body as they cook.
Onion
Softened onion adds sweetness and savory depth to the base of the stew.
Carrots
Sugars in the carrots add gentle sweetness and soft texture after simmering.

The step that matters

Browning the beef. Searing beef over medium heat before adding liquid creates browned flavor through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pot or skipping the sear leaves the meat gray and the stew flatter in taste.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, potato, onion, garlic, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, potato, onion, garlic, pepper. 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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