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Stewed Beets

Stewed beets are boiled beets simmered with butter, flour, parsley, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Beets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beets

  1. Boil the beets until tender.

  2. Scrape and slice the boiled beets.

Stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine the butter and flour to make a roux.

  2. Add the sliced beets, parsley, vinegar, salt, and pepper to the stewpan.

  3. Set the pan over medium heat and let the beets stew for 1 hour.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Beets
Provide the main body and earthy flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor through the stew.
All-purpose flour
Forms a roux with the butter that thickens the stewing liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet, earthy beets.

The step that matters

Make the roux before adding the beets. Cooking the butter and flour together first removes the raw starch taste and lets the flour thicken the liquid evenly, so the stew does not turn lumpy or pasty.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, vinegar, pepper. 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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