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Beef Stew

A slow-cooked beef stew with onions, herbs, ketchup, flour, allspice, lemon, Worcestershire sauce, and brown sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Summer savory and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 125 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the beef

  1. Sauté the sliced onion in the dripping until fried.

  2. Add the beef pieces and cover with cold water.

  3. Simmer on low heat until the meat is tender and can be broken with a fork.

  4. Let it sit covered for 5 to 6 hours or overnight.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the fat an hour before serving.

  2. Add summer savory, sweet marjoram, chopped onion, and parsley.

  3. Bring to a steady boil.

  4. Stir in tomato ketchup, browned flour, allspice mixed with cold water, lemon juice, and Worcestershire sauce.

  5. Boil sharply, then add the brown sherry 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. Summer savory + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Marjoram + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Summer savory + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Summer savory + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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
Slow simmering breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender enough to break with a fork.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the stew becomes a rich, body-filled gravy.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity that rounds out the savory broth.
Brown sherry
Adds a fortified, aromatic depth added at the end to finish the flavour.

The step that matters

Boil sharply before adding the sherry. Alcohol added to a hot liquid partly evaporates during boiling, so adding the sherry just before serving keeps its aroma and flavour in the finished stew while the thickened sauce is brought up to heat.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, summer savory, marjoram, parsley, ketchup, flour):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, summer savory, marjoram, parsley, ketchup, flour. 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.

More beef stew recipes

with Dumplings 30Brazilian 20French 20Spiced 17Pudding 16English 15 See all 357 →

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