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Beef Stew

A hearty stew of beef, vegetables, and dumplings 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 turnip 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 ↓

Beef Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fat and vegetables

  1. Cut the meat and fat into small pieces.

  2. Fry the fat until it begins to brown.

  3. Add the carrot, turnip, and onions; stir over the fire for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove the fat and vegetables, then add the bones to the kettle.

Simmer the stew

  1. Add the meat and cooked vegetables, season with salt and pepper, and sprinkle with flour.

  2. Pour in the water and simmer gently for 1 hour.

  3. Add the sliced potatoes and simmer for 1 hour longer.

  4. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed.

Finish with dumplings

  1. Increase heat to boil more rapidly, stir in dumplings, and cook for 10 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during long gentle simmering.
Beef fat
Adds richness and flavour when fried, and carries flavour into the broth.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, building the savoury base of the stew.
Potatoes
Absorb flavour from the broth and thicken it slightly as their starch releases.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the stew becomes body-rich rather than thin.

The step that matters

Simmering the stew gently. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and the broth clear. A hard boil toughens meat proteins and can break up the potatoes and vegetables.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

More beef stew recipes

with Dumplings 30Brazilian 20French 20Spiced 17Pudding 16English 15 See all 357 →

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