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Brunswick Stew

A stew of roast mutton with lima beans, potatoes, turnips, carrots, tomatoes, parsnip, cabbage, and water, thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Brunswick Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cut the meat into slices, removing bones and fat.

  2. Place the bones in a stew pan and cover the bones with water.

  3. Cook gently for 2 hours.

  4. Mix flour with ½ cup of the water from the 2 quarts and stir into the broth, adding salt and pepper.

  5. Cook for 20 minutes.

Assemble and cook

  1. Layer the meat and vegetables in a large stew pan.

  2. Strain the broth over the meat and vegetables.

  3. Place the butter on top.

  4. Cover the stew pan tightly.

  5. Cook gently for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve very 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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  5. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 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

Roast mutton
Provides meat flavour and rich savoury body to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the broth so it becomes a body-rich, cohesive stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and smooths the finished stew.
Potatoes
Break down slightly during long cooking, adding starch that thickens the stew.
Lima beans
Hold their shape while adding earthy sweetness and a firm, starchy texture.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and sweetness that balance the rich meat and broth.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the broth. Flour lumps if added undiluted to hot liquid. Mixing it first with cool water spreads the starch evenly, so the broth thickens smoothly rather than clumping.

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, meat, potato, turnip, carrot, tomato, parsnip):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, meat, potato, turnip, carrot, tomato, parsnip. 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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