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Onion and Meat Stew

A stew of onions, meat, and water simmered with optional seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 237 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Onion and Meat Stew

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Slice the onions and fry them until brown.

  2. Pound the meat and fry it over high heat until it browns slightly, turning each piece after a few seconds.

  3. Transfer the browned meat to a saucepan.

  4. Pour water into the frying pan to deglaze, then add the brown liquid and fried onions to the meat.

  5. Let it simmer slowly for one hour, adding other seasonings to taste if desired.

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. Sage + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together237 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Sage + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together480 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Summer savory + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together68 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Frying them until brown builds a sweet, savory base for the stew.
Meat
Browning the pounded meat adds savory flavor and color to the stew.

The step that matters

Browning the meat over high heat. Turning each piece after a few seconds lets it brown evenly. Searing at high heat builds flavorful browned compounds, while overcrowding or lingering steams the meat instead of browning it.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, meat, sage, summer savory, carrot):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, meat, sage, summer savory, carrot. 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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