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Beef Stew

A slow-cooked beef stew with onions, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Beef Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the beef

  1. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the steak pieces and brown them.

  3. Remove the steak from the pan.

  4. Roll the steak pieces in flour.

  5. Return the steak to the pan.

Simmer

  1. Add onions, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

  2. Cover the pan.

  3. Simmer for 4 hours.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Flour
Coats the meat so it browns and thickens the cooking liquid.
Butter
Carries the heat for browning the meat and adds richness.
Onions
Soften during simmering and add sweetness and body to the stew.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich stew.

The step that matters

Brown the steak before simmering. Browning the flour-coated meat in butter creates deep savoury flavours through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or skipping this stage leaves the stew flat and grey-tasting.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cinnamon, clove, allspice, 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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