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Stew of Cold Meat

A stew made with cold meat, potatoes, onion, chili pepper, tomato, and butter, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stew of Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a hot pan, melt the butter.

  2. Add the chopped onion, chili pepper, and tomato; fry slowly until browned.

  3. Stir in the cold meat and cold potatoes.

  4. Add boiling water to cover the stew and season with salt.

  5. Stew slowly for 30 minutes.

Thicken and finish

  1. To thicken, mix the flour with the butter and stir into the stew.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 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

Cold meat
Forms the main body of the stew and provides its savory flavor.
Potatoes
Add body and starch that helps lightly thicken the stew as they break down.
Flour
Thickens the stew's liquid when cooked with fat and stirred in.
Tomato
Adds acidity and body to the stew base after frying.
Onion
Browns in the butter to build sweetness and depth of flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and butter. Flour added directly to hot liquid can clump; mixing it with butter first coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly and thicken the stew smoothly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, pepper, meat, potato, flour. 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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