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Brunswick Stew

A hearty stew of chicken or squirrels, bacon, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, butter beans, and lemon, seasoned with butter, pepper, and sea salt.

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, combine the chicken or squirrels and bacon with 6 quarts of water.

  2. Cook until the meat is tender, then remove the meat from the bones.

  3. Return the meat to the pot, adding more water if necessary.

  4. Add the prepared tomatoes, potatoes, corn, butter beans, lemon juice, and lemon zest.

  5. Stew until the vegetables are cooked through.

  6. Season with butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt, stirring carefully to prevent burning.

  7. Serve hot.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Potato + corntop 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

Chicken or squirrel
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavours the broth as it cooks.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savoury fat that enriches the broth.
Potatoes
Soften during stewing and thicken the broth slightly as their starch releases.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, breaking down into the stew to give a rich base.
Butter beans
Hold their shape while stewing and add creamy texture and mild sweetness.
Corn
Adds sweetness and a tender texture, and thickens the stew as its starch releases.

The step that matters

Stirring while seasoning and stewing. The stew is thick and sits on the heat, so the bottom can scorch. Stirring carefully distributes heat and keeps sugars from the tomato, corn and butter from burning.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, tomato, potato, corn, 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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