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Beef Stew

A hearty stew of beef, onion, carrot, turnip, seasoned with salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, tomato ketchup, simmered in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dredge the beef pieces in flour, then season with salt and pepper.

  2. Add the sliced onion, carrot, and turnip to the beef.

  3. Stir in Worcestershire sauce and tomato ketchup.

  4. Cover the ingredients with boiling water.

Cook

  1. Cook for 5 hours in a slow cooker or on low heat.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Shin of beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow cooking.
Flour
Coats the beef so it helps thicken the cooking liquid and aids browning.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens into the stew.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury depth and tangy, umami flavour to the stew.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity that rounds out the stew's flavour.

The step that matters

Cook for 5 hours in a slow cooker or on low heat. Shin is a tough cut rich in connective tissue. Slow, gentle heat over a long time breaks that tissue down into gelatin, making the meat tender. Cooking too hot can toughen the meat and leave it chewy.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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