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Welsh Stew

A beef stew simmered with broth, lemon rind, and a sauce of rice flour, mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, and soy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Welsh Stew

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, pour the broth or gravy over the beef and bring to a boil.

  2. Add salt and cayenne pepper as needed, then reduce to a simmer for 2 hours.

  3. After 1½ hours, add the grated lemon rind.

  4. Mix the rice flour with the mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, and soy sauce until smooth.

  5. Stir the mixture into the stew and cook for an additional 15 minutes before serving.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Rice + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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

Rump of beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Rice flour
Thickens the stew's liquid as it cooks, giving it body.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the stew.
Lemon rind
Adds bright aroma and citrus flavour to the stew.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury flavours.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the stew. Rice flour mixed with liquid can clump if added in lumps. Mixing it smooth first, then stirring it through the hot stew, lets the starch disperse evenly and thicken the liquid without lumps.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, rice, flour, mushroom, ketchup, sauce):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, rice, flour, mushroom, ketchup, sauce. 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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