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Brown Stew with Dumplings

A beef stew thickened with suet and flour, topped with simple dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Brown Stew with Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the beef

  1. In a saucepan, heat the suet until the fat is rendered, then remove the crackling.

  2. Add the beef to the hot fat and brown thoroughly over high heat.

  3. Once browned, add 2 tablespoons of flour and mix well.

  4. Pour in 1 quart of stock or water, stir until boiling, then add salt, onion, and pepper.

Stew and make dumplings

  1. Cover and cook slowly for 1.5 hours.

  2. In a bowl, combine 1 cup of flour, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon baking powder.

  3. Sift the dry ingredients and add enough milk to moisten.

Finish and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the dumpling mixture on top of the stew, cover, and cook for 10 minutes without lifting the lid.

  2. Serve the dumplings around the edge of the platter.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Browning and slow cooking turn the cubes tender and savoury in the stew.
Suet
Rendered fat browns the beef and adds richness to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the stew's cooking liquid as it cooks with the fat and stock.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the moist dough, helping the dumplings rise and turn light.

The step that matters

Brown the beef thoroughly over high heat. Searing the beef in hot fat creates browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or stopping early leaves the meat grey and steamed, with a flatter taste in the finished stew.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, pepper, milk. 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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