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Beef or Veal Stewed with Apples

A stew of thinly sliced beef or veal with apples, butter, salt, pepper, and optional onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef or Veal Stewed with Apples

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub a stewpan with butter.

  2. Add the thinly sliced meat, coarse sea salt, black pepper, and finely sliced apples.

  3. If desired, add some onion.

  4. Cover and stew until the meat is tender.

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

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or veal
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender with slow, moist cooking.
Apples
Add sweetness and acidity, and soften into the stew as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and greases the pan to keep the meat from sticking.

The step that matters

Cover and stew until the meat is tender. Gentle, covered stewing with moisture breaks down the tough connective tissue in the meat. Stopping too early leaves it chewy, while covering keeps the liquid and flavour in the pot.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beef, pepper, apple):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, pepper, apple. 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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