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Australian Beef

A stew of Australian beef pieces simmered in a brown gravy with onion, mushroom ketchup, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Australian Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Roll the beef pieces in flour.

  2. Melt the dripping in a saucepan.

  3. Mix in the ground rice and stock until smooth.

  4. Add bay leaves, peppercorns, salt, mushroom ketchup, and the onion.

  5. Bring to a boil, then simmer gently for 20 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. Strain the liquid and return it to the saucepan.

  2. Color the gravy with browning or melted sugar until dark brown.

  3. Dissolve the sugar in boiling water and add to the gravy.

  4. Simmer the meat in the gravy for 3-4 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Rice + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Walnut + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during slow simmering.
Dripping
Provides fat for browning and carries flavor into the gravy.
Ground rice
Thickens the stock into a smooth gravy as its starch swells with heat.
Flour
Coats the beef so it browns and helps thicken the surrounding gravy.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savory depth and umami to the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer the meat in the gravy for 3-4 minutes. Simmering only briefly keeps the meat from toughening and overcooking; the gravy should be dark and smooth before the meat goes in, so the color and texture are set.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, walnut, flour, rice, mushroom, ketchup, onion):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, walnut, flour, rice, mushroom, ketchup, onion. 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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