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Brunswick Stew

A stew of bacon, squirrels or chickens, onion, water, tomatoes, corn, potatoes, butter beans, red pepper, bread crumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brunswick Stew

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, cook the bacon, squirrels or chickens, and sliced onion in 1 gallon of water for about four hours.

  2. Add the peeled tomatoes, grated corn, sliced potatoes, butter beans, and red pepper pod.

  3. Stew everything together for about one hour until the meat is tender and bones can be removed.

  4. Once done, stir in the bread crumbs and butter.

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. Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Corn + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Potato + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Squirrels or chickens
Provide the meat that becomes tender during the long simmer.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savory fat that flavors the broth.
Potatoes
Soften during the stew and thicken the broth with their starch.
Butter beans
Add body and a creamy texture to the stew.
Bread crumbs
Help thicken the stew at the end of cooking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, tomato, corn, potato, butter, beans, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, tomato, corn, potato, butter, beans, pepper. 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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