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Beef Stew with Dumplings

A hearty beef stew with dumplings made from flour, baking powder, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Stew with Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the meat from the bones and cut into 2-inch pieces.

  2. Season the meat with flour, salt, and pepper.

  3. Brown the meat in fat or drippings in a stew pan.

Cook the stew

  1. Add the onion, turnip, and carrots to the pan.

  2. Pour in boiling water to cover the ingredients.

  3. Cook slowly for 2 hours.

  4. Add the soaked potatoes.

  5. Cook for 5 minutes.

Make and add the dumplings

  1. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt for the dumplings.

  2. Add milk to form a soft dough.

  3. Pat out the dough into small cakes or roll and cut with a biscuit cutter.

  4. Add the dumplings to the stew, ensuring the liquid covers them slightly.

  5. Cover and cook for 10 minutes without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat in the center of a platter with vegetables and dumplings around it.

  2. Thicken the gravy and pour it around the vegetables.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Beef
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow cooking in liquid.
Flour
Coats the meat to help it brown and thickens the gravy.
Potatoes
Absorb cooking liquid and add starch that gives body to the stew.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the dumplings rise and stay light.
Milk
Moistens the flour into a soft dough that cooks into tender dumplings.

The step that matters

Cook the dumplings without boiling. A gentle simmer lets the dumplings cook through and rise without breaking apart or becoming dense and gummy. Vigorous boiling can tear the dough and make the stew cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, pepper, meat, turnip, carrot, potato):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, pepper, meat, turnip, carrot, 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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