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Stewed Beef

A slow‑cooked beef stew with onions, herbs, allspice, Worcestershire sauce, wine, and browned flour thickening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Stewed Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into strips about 1 inch long.

Make the stew

  1. Cover with 2 cups of water and stew gently for 2 hours.

  2. Add the chopped onion and herbs, along with salt, pepper, and allspice, and stew for another 30 minutes, covered.

  3. Stir in the browned flour and cook until thickened, then add Worcestershire sauce and wine.

Serve

  1. Cover the bottom of a deep dish with strips of fried bread and pour the stew over it.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Thyme + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together214 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Marjoram + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Thyme + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Marjoram + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Slow stewing breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and rich in body.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy-like sauce and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the stew's liquid.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury, tangy depth that rounds out the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew gently after adding the water. A gentle simmer keeps the meat's connective tissue breaking down slowly, so it becomes tender without the proteins tightening and drying out. A hard boil toughens the meat and reduces the liquid too quickly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, thyme, marjoram, summer savory, pepper, allspice, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, thyme, marjoram, summer savory, pepper, allspice, 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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