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Sea Stew

Sea Stew is a hearty stew of steak, onion, potatoes, and dumplings simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Sea Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the onion.

  2. Cut the steak into squares.

Brown and thicken

  1. Brown the onion in a bit of hot dripping.

  2. Brown the steak squares.

  3. Sprinkle the steak and onion with flour.

  4. Pour in the stock.

  5. Bring to a boil.

  6. Skim the surface.

Stew and serve

  1. Par-boil the potatoes.

  2. Slice the potatoes.

  3. Add the potatoes to the steak.

  4. Stew the meat until done, about two hours.

  5. Steam the dumplings separately.

  6. Place the dumplings around a hot dish with the meat in the center.

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. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Buttock steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow stewing.
Flour
Dusted over the browned meat and onion, it thickens the stock into a gravy.
Potatoes
Add body and starch to the stew, softening as they cook in the liquid.
Onion
Browning builds savoury flavour and sweetness that season the stew.
Stock
Forms the cooking liquid that carries flavour and moistens the meat.

The step that matters

Stew the meat until done, about two hours. Buttock steak is a tough cut; it needs a long, gentle simmer so collagen breaks down into gelatin and the meat turns tender. Boiling hard can toughen the fibres, so keep the stew at a slow simmer.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, potato. 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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